And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 121: Grey

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Multi-platinum, GRAMMY nominated artist/producers – comprised of brothers Kyle and Michael Trewartha – are known for their chart-topping style of pop music, blending crisp electronic production and infectious vocal melodies. Each amassing over 2 billion global streams, our guests' viral hit singles “The Middle” and “Starving” introduced the duo to virtually every corner of the world. In 2016, RIAA Quadruple-Platinum song “Starving” with Hailee Steinfeld and Zedd reached #5 at the US Top 40 and was nominated for an American Music Award. In 2018, “The Middle” – in collaboration with Zedd and Maren Morris – became a certified RIAA Triple-Platinum record, held the #1 spot on the US Top 40 charts for five consecutive weeks, and accumulated three GRAMMY nominations, two iHeart Music Awards, a Billboard Music Award, and an AMA nomination. The duo has performed “The Middle” with collaborators Zedd and Marren Morris on The Billboard Music Awards and Ellen. Other notable releases include Camila Cabello collaboration “Crown” for Netflix’s Bright Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2017), and “Grey Area” featuring Disney starlet Sofia Carson (2019). In 2020, our guests offered their most personal and genre-defying installment yet in the form of sibling EPs: LIGHT and DARK. The 11-song project features vocals, writing, and production from the brothers on every song, and represents a new and exciting phase for them. Michael explains, “This time the music is really coming from us. It’s about our lives and our friends, the good and the bad.” And The Writer Is… Grey!Artwork: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. www.organdthar is.com. Welcome to Ann the Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's many, many times platinum chart-topping Grammy-nominated DJs

don't just have matching hair but matching DNA too. These brothers are sound designing producers that have redefined traditional instruments famously using samples like woodchops for snare drums. All the way from Huntington Beach, California, this duo has taken the world by storm collaborating with the biggest names in dance music, thusly bridging the gap between EDM and popular music,

which kind of explains their name as well. And the writers are somewhere in the middle of black and white. Michael and Kyle Trawatha, aka Gray. Wow. That was awesome.

You killed it. You even got the name. Perfect. I was panicking there. Yeah. I was panicking in my sweatpants. So you guys are in... Are you wearing pants?

Am I wearing pants? We're going no pants. Well, that's the only way to do an interview. I'm going to do an interview. I mean, the amount of things that have happened on Zoom, I imagine that there are some weird stories that will come out. When they do the 30 for 30 about, or whatever the documentary is about this era,

there are going to be some weird stories. Yeah. And canceling on-professional work environments and things like that. Have you guys been working a lot on Zoom? Have you been producing a lot of records? We did like three sessions, like three or four sessions. Yeah. How do they go?

It was good. I think, did we use two of them? We have like two EPs that we're working on right now, and I think two of the songs came out of Zoom sessions. Yeah, you know John the Blind? Yeah. Yeah. Our first two sessions with them were on Zoom,

and they were both two for two. Yeah. Both on our EP. Okay, let's do this interview. Let's get, let people get to know you guys a little bit. Let's go. Kyle, you were born in Australia. Yes.

Sydney. Are your parents Australian then? My dad is. Yeah. My mom's from L.A. And then, Michael, you were not born in Australia. No, I was born in Hawaii. You were born in Hawaii?

Yeah. My parents really like living on the beach. So they moved from Sydney to Honolulu to Huntington Beach. Are they surfers? No, actually. I don't know. They just like living next to the water, I think.

Are they musicians? No. They're the opposite. Yeah, definitely not. My dad used to work for Kwanis, like the Australian Airlines. And my mom's done a bunch of stuff. She used to be a clown. She's had like a million jobs.

But now they have like a business where they take people to Germany and drive Porsches. and stuff on the Audubon. Yeah. Those are all so unusual for, I don't want to say weird because they're just more unusual than anything else, but was your dad a pilot? Or is he a pilot? No, he was like an engineer. He like signed off on the planes to make sure they were like good to go.

Yeah. And your mom was, what was her, what was her clown name? Bobo. I think it was Bobo. Yeah, right? Dude, I have like memories of being like young. like me like five years old and she's like holding me and she's full on wearing clown makeup and I'm like so I'm not scared of clowns for the rest of my life yeah wait did you guys have

clowns at all your birthday parties then I would assume yeah yeah she was a graduate graduation and things like like exactly wait so uh Kyle are you an American citizen yeah we're both dual okay between Australia yeah yes do you remember living in Hawaii or did you guys move? I was one. I remember it. I thought it was weird. I guess at the time I didn't realize it was weird,

but to get to our front door, you had to go upstairs. It was like a normal house, except the front door was on the second floor. I thought that was kind of odd. Just because it was that, it was literally on the beach then. Yeah.

We were pretty close. Yeah, I mean, I don't remember too much, I was really young. Why did your family move to California? I think it had to do with my dad's job probably that he got a job at LAX. Right. Yeah. What was it they, what kind of music did you guys listen to?

And what was it that got you into actually being fans of music? I think like when we were really young, we just listened to whatever our sisters listen to. We have two older sisters, and they would play like Destiny's Child and Britney Spears, whatever, that kind of stuff. And then as we started, you know, getting iPod shuffles and like actually having control of our own music, we got really

into like Prague metal and Prague rock and stuff like Dream Theater and, I don't know, system of a down. There's a lot of like, I guess there's not like Prague, but a lot of Prague metal stuff and I don't know, just anything that was like hard but also melodic if that makes sense. Yeah. Like the next year of play, yeah. It's sort of and all that like, yeah, keep going. What were you going to do? I think it kind of started with, I mean like Avenge

Sevenfold. A lot of them went to, I went to Beach High School. Like my sister went to school with some of them. And I think that Kyle met with the tars one time and hung out with them and I was in a system of a down and then he started getting more into like like he was getting a lot more into learning guitar so he was really interested in stuff that was really difficult and like stuff that would teach stuff that would teach him how to play guitar better and like like just um stuff that he could just go in and be like okay if i can learn this then like this is just gonna make me a better guitar player so he just kind of ended up gravitating towards things that were just like really complex and technical yeah i think that's the thing like at that time of my life

the music that I was into, I didn't realize it, but I wasn't into it because I liked it. I was into it because it taught me how to be a better guitar player. And it was like, how can I want up the last thing that I learned how to play? And that's what guided my musical choices. So it became like more and more technical. Like, you know, it just got into like math rock and things that aren't even like interesting or good to listen to. But I thought it was cool because it was hard to play. Right.

I mean, that's in theater for sure. Yeah, a bunch of artists like that. When did you get a guitar? When I was like 10 years old, my mom put me in like all these sports and they would just like take me out if I wasn't good because I would I just sucked at all of them. And at some point she put me in choir and that was like the first thing where she was like, okay, finally we found the thing. So, like, she from then on just got me like a piano and a guitar, so right around 10. I don't think of you guys as singers or guitarists, but that obviously was a part of your youth then. Yeah, like I started playing guitar long before I was saying.

Like, I guess I was in choir for a little bit there, but like guitar just became my obsession for a really long time. And it wasn't until I was like in high school that I started singing again, you know. You guys both played drums too, right? Yeah. Yeah, we both. He joined drumline and then I think I was like just finishing up with getting sick of being in track and football or whatever I was in. So I just joined drumline with him. Did you play actual kits too?

Or was it mostly just for, for? No, it was like marching band stuff. so like, you know, bass drum and like snare and that kind of stuff. I imagine that's pretty useful as a producer if you've been around interesting drum rhythms. Yeah, it's weird. Like depending on which bass drum you are, for instance, you sometimes have to play really odd stuff. Like if you're bass number two, you always have to play on off beats. So I think Michael was base too.

So you're never like playing on the on beat. you're always like, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,

it's just like, really, uh, trains your rhythmical brain, I think. It's good. It's really fun because it's like

a lot of splits. So it's just, yeah, five people, just try and like do a full rhythm together, make it work. It's funny. Yeah.

Most producers now, you know, if you look at little kids now, they, they, they don't get guitars. They get, you know,

they get, yeah, they get able, they get a computer with Ableton. and then they can, you know, they kind of are born to be producers, but they don't necessarily have the instrumentation to back up, you know, or the ability to music direct, but you guys having all that musical knowledge, did you find that, I assume that you agree that you need some sort of training to be a good producer.

Is that right or no? Yeah, I mean, whenever people ask me, like, how do I become a good producer? And they're hoping that I say, like, go to Guitar Center and buy this little launch pad thing or something. And I'm like, no, learn how to play an instrument first, for sure. Like, whether it be piano or guitar or flute, I don't care. Just learn something because it'll teach you so much more than Ableton will in the first place, I think. you guys must have been in some sort of band in high school. If you're playing guitar and you guys can play some sort of drums,

did you guys ever play in a, did you ever want to be in one of those Prague rock kind of bands? Yeah, I had like a Prague metal band with my friends when I was in high school. But really quickly, after recording our first stuff, I just became obsessed with, that process and started doing it on my own. Yeah. When did you guys start, you know, the idea of writing songs or creating music? See, yeah, my first songs I ever wrote, I guess, were back then.

And, like, I was probably 15, 16, and writing songs for our, like, my prog metal band. And it was really bad. It was just, like, really, really bad. music, but I was less into the songwriting at that point, to be honest, and more into like, whoa, like you can record stuff and I don't know, just the whole idea that you can put something into your computer. We're using like Audacity or whatever. Wait, what's Upacity? Oh, Audacity is like this free program for, I think it used to be PC only, but it's just the worst kind of daw there is. Because you can't,

The idea of a plugin isn't a thing. If you want to change something, you have to just like highlight it, I think, and press, you know, confirm. And it will just change the file forever. You can't go back. It's really bad. But anyways, yeah, so using Audacity. And I don't know, just the idea of recording was what I was obsessed with when I was

younger, not necessarily like writing yet. But using a dot to record stuff, I mean, I guess I remember using, you know, reason and whatnot and starting to use some of the, like, whatever, digital performer and some of these different DAs that existed. But when you're trying to create this stuff where you already trying to make sounds, were you already trying to push a limit? Or were you trying to sound like they were sounding? Do you know what I mean? Like when you're recording at that point, are you trying to? to emulate or was it sort of, well, I can't emulate, so I might as well create?

I mean, at this point, I was just trying to emulate for sure, because all we wanted was our stuff to sound as pro and as full as the bands that we listened to. And we would just sit there forever and be like, how, what angle do I need to turn the mics on the drum to get it to sound that way? And I think we didn't realize how much it's about the post stuff, because we would, I said, we're using the worst program ever. So we weren't doing any compression or anything like that. We're just like, why doesn't sound good? And we thought it was just a mic issue or something.

But, yeah. The funny thing now is when you listen back those bands you were trying to emulate, didn't even sound that good either. Yeah. It's weird. Well, it sounds like sounds unique. You know, a lot of those bands all sound like, I mean, a pedestrian listener.

to that genre. But if you played me some of those bands back to back, I don't know that I could have told them all apart from each other because the instrumentation was often the same. Yeah. Yeah, it's just all about like being a virtuoso or something. Now that kind of stuff really puts me off. I have kind of, I have a bad taste in my mouth about music

that's only about showing off. So, yeah, I've kind of come around. on that. When did you guys, did you guys go to college? Did you guys go straight into making music? I went to two years of college at San Francisco State University.

For music? I mean, yeah, I took some music courses for sure. I don't think I had really, I didn't really care what I was doing in school, to be honest, because my teachers just didn't. understand anything and that's actually why I ended up leaving. We had like a day where we would go in and show our music and everyone played their songs and I played something I was working on and the teacher was just like, what are you doing with like, it's all like ducking? Like, what is the

ducking thing? And I was like, this guy doesn't know about side chain and I just started producing like, I need to leave. This isn't for me, you know. You weren't using that old duh if you were a side chain. No, no, no, by that point, I was using either Logic or Ableton. I don't remember. But that was the first, that was the first time you guys really had been separate in your entire lives. Yeah. Yeah. I went to, like, a community college for, like, half a semester and took, like, graphic design and, like, business or something.

I don't know. And that was, like, around the time that my parents, like, moved to Vegas. I didn't want to move to Vegas. So just, like, got a job at some Olive Garden. Maguna. You worked in Olive Garden? Yes. Like as a waiter?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Breadsticks. Yeah. Yeah. Breast sticks. Do you think that they had any idea, you know, at the time where you thinking of yourself

as having a ambitions of being a musician or at that point where you just like, this is what you do, you get a job? I was like right around the time that. Kyle had been making electronic music for a little while, and I've been kind of like in the process with him, like just like helping him out, telling him what I think sounds good and what doesn't. Like I was really into electronic music.

So he would ask me for my opinion all the time. And then around that time was when he said, like, you should make your own project. Like you should do one and I'll help you out. And like you should make your own project. And I think it was like 2015 or something. And I was like making some electronic. music stuff on my own under a different project name.

What was that project name? It was called like Cyrus. It was just you solo? Yeah, just me solo. And it was just kind of Kyle trying to like push me to learn production and like do stuff on my own just to like try to get some kind of success. I don't have to like be working as a server. And he was like doing his own thing in San Monica.

And then I think like right around that time like we just started working together on the gray project. and then, like, I was still working at AllGarden when we sent, like, an email to Scroats and all the stuff was that happened. Yeah. Wait, before you get to Screlics, Kyle, what was your project called before Gray? I had a few different things, but the main one that was, like, probably four years long was called Singularity. did you guys did you have any success with that or was it more just putting out music i mean i played edc a couple times yeah i was like won their discovery project kind of it was called like

discovery project and i won that and went on a few tours like i had some crazy experiences with that because my manager we did this long crazy tour like you know probably 40 dates or something like that and got back and my manager stole everyone's money because he managed everyone on the tour took every cent we were all just so poor and like really needed the money and he took it all and dipped so do you know where he is now uh he has his own project now actually i yeah i shouldn't say but yeah how do we give how do we get this money back for you i think in the end it's probably a good thing that I was like, man, I need to like figure out the business end of this and have a manager who's actually got my back and not like a scumbag.

That's an interesting way to learn. I mean, I think learning by errors is probably a good way to figure things out. But you're on tour and I think when you say I'm on tour for 40 nights, that just sounds like a number. But when you're spending the time it takes to get from city to city and you're having to to play those shows and come back to no money must have been pretty demoralizing.

Yeah, and it's all in like a van too. It's not luxurious in any way. You know, you're eating Taco Bell every night and whatever. He told me one of those shows he got there and literally there was three people and they said like, and they were just like,

yeah, do you guys? You guys were just like, instead of us playing and they're like, yeah, it was probably the worst show I ever played was in Colorado Springs. And there were actually just three people there, but they didn't come together. They were just separated in this big kind of venue. And I just told them, like, if you guys want, this is kind of awkward.

Like, maybe we should just come back and play video games and talk because it's going to be so weird if I play the show right now. And they agreed. I mean, the amount of shows that people who are just starting to tour that you play for one person equals as many people as you play for 300 people. Yeah. Yeah. It just ends up being somebody doesn't promote it.

Whatever happens, you show up, you plug in, and there's nobody there. I mean, I don't know one artist who doesn't have a little bit of that story. Yeah. It feels bad, man. Do you have any cities that you were surprised

at how many fans you did have? I mean, how are people... They're definitely good shows. but we played with our friend, like my friends named Candyland at the time. And I would guess most of the fans were there for them. But either way, I just got experience and it was fun.

How were people hearing, you know, either Cyrus or what was it called? Singularity. Or singularity. How were people hearing the music from, you know, at that point? Mainly like SoundCloud and there was this guy on YouTube. he saw as a channel, his name's Mr. Suicide Sheep. And back in the day, he just had such a massive audience than anyone who he put on his YouTube channel

would just get millions of plays. So he would always support my music. So I think that helped a lot. Did you, would you just email him a new remix and then hope that he would play it? No one knew his email back in the day. And no one knows what he looks like. He's just a mysterious figure.

But he would just find things on SoundCloud. He liked my music. What do you think he looked like? I don't know. I'm sure. I feel like he has black curly hair. I was always imagining with black curly hair. Who knows?

Like, yeah. Yeah. Um, a lot of that time period was like, all remix competitions actually. I feel like, what,

wait, say that a louder? Like all remix competitions. Like, so many, what is the website called? Um, quote,

two. Yeah, they just, yeah, the port would do like remix competition. so I would always enter those and won a few of those. You probably have like seven in a competition. Yeah.

Wait, so you go from Olive Garden, you know, and Kyle, you leave San Francisco. Yeah. So, yeah, when I moved to L.A. finally, around whatever, 2013. 2014, I was at the lowest, lowest point in my life. It was like, this is after I had all that money stolen from me and I decided to quit that project. And I moved in with this, you know, there was like three of us in a one bedroom place. And it was this really small one bedroom place in Hollywood.

And I was like in the kitchen, essentially. Like my bed, you had to like kind of do dishes over my bed. essentially. It was like, it was a rough time. And I was like working at Fuddruckers. So I was just really determined to like make something work at that point. What did your sisters and your parents think as you're, you know, probably, we're in school. You dropped out of school. You guys are both, you know, trying to do DJ stuff independently. What do you think you're, what were your parents thinking at that time? they're probably thinking a very respectable

told you so type feeling like very like just worried and like just kind of like you need to do something that's actually going to happen like we've been telling you that this isn't going to work your whole life yeah

did they say that were they always trying to push against you guys pursuing music as a profession I think our mom was a little more hopeful and a little bit more supportive than our dad But you can always feel like in the back end of everything they say that they're just still thinking like, okay, like come on, you need to do something for real now. Like at least do something for real.

Yeah. I don't know. I was never like a full force like Billy Alice's parents like, hey, like you're going to do this and it's going to be great and we support you until the day we die. You know, like I don't know. Yeah, they're very results oriented, I would say. Just like they'll believe it when they see the check, the paycheck. Yeah. So, you know, going to the next thing, then you guys end up being, you know, who approaches

who and says we should, we should make this into our, you know, one collection of two DJs rather than, you know, who says, let's call it gray. And why did you guys call it gray? Like, what actually happened was, like Kyle said, he had quit his old project, but he just started a new project. and he like got hit up by Insomniac Records at Interscope

and he was going to do a meeting with them about four new songs for this new project and he was super excited and then like that came and he had a meeting and it fell through and it was just some weird shit so he was like okay like screw this but at that time when he was getting that meeting

he was like yo we should start a project where like I just like help you with all the production stuff and then just make it a really cool name. And I'm like, I do graphic design. So he's like make it a super cool logo. Try to think of like the like most simple, cool name. And then like we'll like tag team the production. But like I'll just do the production.

And then we'll just try to blow it up and just do cool shit. And then I was like, okay. And then I thought of the name gray because my hair was gray at the time. And then I made a cool logo like a little G like emblem. And then, yeah, like somehow got the SoundCloud URL, just act gray. And then we started doing that. And then a little bit into it, I think we only did two remixes. We remixed Beautiful Now by Zed and Where Are You Now by Sproitz.

Like, he's a... Jackie. Yeah, Jackie, you think. And then our buddy was like, hey, like, if you ever have any, like, crazy songs that you're really proud of, I'm pretty sure I had me, Sprolyleck's email. I just came across it. And then we had that Jackie remix, so we went and sent it to him.

And Kyle sent it to him, actually. And I think the subject was just like, hey. And then he, like, didn't want to make it seem like we were, like, self-promoting. So he was like, hey, man, my brother did a remix to your song. Like, just check it out when it was obviously, like, we both did it together. and then I think I was back at Aldgaarden working and then on my break I went and checked my phone and I was like yo Stroach just replied like literally 15 minutes later and he's like he asked me to send him everything and I send him the Zed remix and then sent it to Zed and Zed's manager I'm going to meet Zez manager

at Interscope tomorrow on Saturday yeah I was like what and he's like yo by the way we're both in gray now it's not just you I was like of course no matter for sure. He's like, and then yeah, he went. That was like one of the most insane days of my life, for sure. Because we're both like really struggling at that point.

And to have like two of our absolute musical idols here, these two things that we made within like 15, 20 minutes was like really, really cool. And I had a meeting with, um, so that's manager Dave the next day. So it was awesome. I mean, there's a lot of times when we've talked about this in a few episodes, but a lot of times people ask like, what can I do to get noticed? And you're like, man, you can't do anything but create music that the person on the other side hears.

And it's like, I have to know the person who makes this music. Yeah. Not like, it doesn't matter. You know, it's that thing. It doesn't matter who you know. It matters who knows you. Like, you know, you can't convince anybody to. to like your music.

You just have to create music that's good enough. You know, that way people listen to it. I can't imagine that you, like if you just emailed Scrolet's and it was like, hey, you want to write? You're like, no. But if you send him a song and he's like, holy shit, that's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Kyle always says this thing, he always says like preparation meets opportunity. Like just like doing your best to be as good as you can and then just getting lucky. It's like the only way for stuff to happen. Yeah.

Well, tell me about both those meetings, one with Skrillix and one with Zed's manager. How did those go? The first thing, we didn't have a meeting with Sproats, so it was just an email chain. But he met with Zed's manager. Yeah, he was just like, well, I guess the thing I came to learn too, which is crazy is like he had known, like, Sunny had, Scroix had known Zed for, what, six, seven years at that point. and Sterlick had never sent Zed any music before. This is the first song that he had ever sent him. And Zed was like in Japan at the time and had bad service and he was like,

I have to figure out a way to play this song. So like, it was more of a big deal to them than I thought originally. But yeah, we went in there, or I went in there and talked to Dave. And he was like, I want to like bring you into the team essentially. I want to manage you if that's cool with you guys. And I want you to meet Zed. And he wants to repost your songs on SoundCloud and release them officially and get more remixes going for some of the other songs on True Colors.

So, yeah, it was a lot. The craziest thing that we found out later on when we actually met Spillogs was that his email that we sent to is like a spam email essentially. And there's like hundreds and hundreds. hundreds of emails that go through their date, and he never checks it, and he checks it like once every couple months, and he just clicks like the top one.

Yeah, so we got like really, really lucky, too. It's not like he checks all those emails. Do you guys check emails when people send you guys remixes? Yeah, I mean, I check stuff every once in a while. I mean, I don't check everything, but I check things once in a while for sure. When you guys are doing remixes, and as DJs, you can make a career off of remixes,

but that's not really the same thing as creating songs from scratch or, you know, really doing what becomes, you know, your first hit, which is starving with Haley Steinfeld, who, you know, all things considered, and I love Haley, like it was just like it wasn't the easiest time. It's not like she has, she's just like, loaded with hits. It's not like

Jack U or Zed or some of these other remixes that you had with big artists. It really was, you know, to get her voice on it is a whole other thing. Tell me about writing that song and the process

of going from remixing songs to creating something from scratch. So first of all, we weren't in the right session for that song. Our friend Asia, we basically got sent like a group

of songs from this girl named Asia Whiteaker. And we had listened through all those and we weren't actually in the same room at the time. We were in Hawaii and we weren't like together but we both were listening to them at the same time and both were like starving. That's the one.

It was so obvious. All it was, it was was just the guitar and the vocals. We're like, this is it, for sure. So for us, honestly, with that process, it really was like doing a remix. It felt so similar to doing a remix to us, except our goal wasn't to make like the craziest sound design thing ever

like it had been before. It was more so like, how do we make this palatable and relatable? I'm telling you that, because that's a big difference. I mean, I think a lot of times producers, when they're first starting, are trying to show everyone what they can do versus making about the song. It's so much about, like, how much we respect, like, Zed's opinion in his, like, his way about doing things. Like, we really just emulated that, I think, with that stuff. Because, yeah, like, we just could, like, really tell that that song was so strong on its own.

it was literally an insanely good song just guitar and vocal. So, okay, how do we not ruin this? Like, can we at least add something and not take away from how good the songs? Yeah, for sure. When you have that kind of hit, there's a different conversation that happens

about, you know, an original song that really works, especially with your name and the title. You know, it's a different thing. Everything that you had done before was really still piggybacked, backing off other people and this one really ends up being like your first introduction to the world. How did that change your fan base? It didn't really change our fan base at all because essentially we're still piggybacking off of bigger people. Like if you really think about it, like we're still piggybacking off of Haley's name and Zed's name because he's on the song as well.

So it just kind of, I don't know, like just to be blunt, it doesn't really like help our fan base at all at that point. I think. Yeah. You know what? If we're going to be like up front about this, this is something we've talked about a lot. And if we could go back to this time, I don't think we would have done these songs as early as we did. Because I think there's something about building your career from the ground up and building fans that would come out to shows and all that. And we didn't ever have a moment to do that.

we went straight from like just being budding artists to having our names on like some of the biggest songs of those years and it inflated a lot of numbers for us like our Spotify monthly listeners and all these kinds of things but there wasn't like a real the the ground level support that we should have been building at the time so although like it was a I'm really proud of these songs and everything if I could go back I probably would have waited to dive into that world, I think. You can't really make that happen. I don't. You can't go back in time, but...

Not even if you go back in time, but for a new artist, you don't want to... You would never advise a new artist to turn those opportunities down. No, I know. That's the crazy part. You couldn't have convinced me to not do them, but I think it's created a lot of challenges for us that were like still working through

because we had to kind of just go back and go let's take care of all this stuff that we didn't do in the first place because we just had these lucky breaks you know I mean you could go back in time and take advantage of like try to take advantage of the situation a little bit better and like work it towards creating your core

fan base a little more instead of just like going with emotions I guess but yeah yeah I know people probably don't say stuff like this on your show but I'm just being honest No, you'd be surprised, man. I think everyone looks at their own career and through it. I wish that we all understood when we're looking at our own careers, we all think we would have done something different.

I don't know any. I know very few people where it just worked out from the outset. And usually those are the weird prodigies where they had their hits so early on that, and then just never really had it down. But even those people, you know, eventually they have ups and downs. And, you know, you're in the middle of your career. If we have the same interview in 20 years, it's going to mean totally different. Maybe all feel totally differently.

I think part of what I'm saying, though, is not enough people in the world understand what a producer does. What does it produce? did you do and I don't know I've been at shows before like I've been at festivals and a lot of people in the crowd think the DJ is making the song on stage like literally people think that so people don't understand how production works they don't know how like if you were to look at a band there's the singer the guitar player the all these different people and they don't understand that a producer does all the other things that the singer isn't doing right that's a really big deal.

So I think that's part of the issue here is that the person who gets all the credit generally is the person on stage and the person singing. And I get why that is. I totally understand why. Like people sing in the shower. No one produces in the shower. Like everyone can sing, right? But I can imagine a world in the future where people understand what producing is more.

And I think that will be a good thing. I think when people's first instruments tends to be computers now. Yeah. That often their first instrument really is trying to put different, you know, essentially to produce rather than to actually sit down and practice scales on a guitar. So I think that you're right that people will talk about production differently. But the same thing, you know, as a guy who mostly writes, melody and lyrics. I mean, obviously I play piano and

guitar and some other instruments. And I produce out a lot of things too. A lot of times I'm looking at a DJ. I'm like, that guy puts the same drums on everything. Yeah. And he's putting the same synth on everything. And then he calls himself a songwriter. What's the difference? Am I wrong? No, I think there can be good writers, bad writers. There could be good producers and bad producers. But

I guess what I'm trying to say is typically if a singer does really well on a song, everyone, no matter who you are, could go, wow, she killed it. Man, she did so well. But if the production and the mixing in a song is insane, there's not many people to be like, wow, this production really carries this track. No one says that because they don't know. They just kind of like it more and they don't know why. So I just, I'm ready for a world where people are more educated on all the different

pieces, you know. Yeah, amen to that. Can you explain? I don't know anything about the remix industry. I never listen to remixes, but all the labels have, you know, every hit has a, you know, has a multiple remixes. You know, as an A&R person, I'm constantly trying to get remixes for my artist because you never know what could happen. What is the remix industry? You end up having so many remixes so many big artists. And for those who don't understand how it works,

explain it like, I don't know what a producer is and I don't know what a DJ is. What is a remixer? And why is that, you know, that seems like a big part of the industry that's very unclear. Well, if you think about music

in terms of genres, and which I don't like thinking about genres, but many people can, you know, think of music in terms of genres. And some people only listen to one genre. So some people are like, I only like house or I only like dubstep or I only like country or only like pop, whatever, right?

So essentially what a remixer can do is take something that's in one lane and move it to another lane so that those people who only listen to House will like it, right? So I guess that's the simplest way to say it. How would you describe your remixes as a whole? Do you tend to, is house your genre that you intend to remix?

No, it's not. Never. Not really genre specific. But I think a difference between ours and a lot of people's is a lot of people tend to like use a lot of stems or a lot of like elements from the original song and then just kind of like remix that essentially and just kind of. make it sound a little different with different rhythms or pace, but we almost always just take the vocal

and just put a fully new chord progression and just fully produce out the song. That's, yeah, that's why I said the process was starving was remarkably similar to a remix for us is because we create an entirely new song from the ground up when we do a remix. There's different chords, there's different everything. So, yeah.

Of all the things that you've had, You know, there's clearly the biggest song, which is the biggest song that I think a lot of people would have in an entire career. And you guys are obviously again just sort of starting. But the middle is so big. And it has, you know, there's a lot of interesting information about how the song was done. There was a whole New York Times thing about it. We all remember hearing it kind of, I want to say it was maybe in like the Super Bowl. Whereas like a commercial for Target and this man that sounds a one listen just smash.

Yeah. And you can't, you know, again, like this is, it's really hard. It's really hard to create an environment for a song to be that big and for it to work that well. And the song was a hit. There aren't a lot of first listen hits. There just aren't. And that's just one that I don't, you know. I kind of want to hear the story from your perspective.

I know about the wood shop because the guys talked about it a lot and it's like it's kind of famous. The wood, that sound of that snare, there's a wood chop in it. Explain just, but explain the whole story of the song. How the song happened from your perspective. I don't think like, should we start from like when we

couldn't even yeah sure so like we had the song for like a year before we didn't have this song but we like had a version of the song for like a year before it even came out and I just remember like wanting to I think we wanted to produce it out right like we didn't have it yet or something

but like yeah so we got sent the demo from Sarah Arons and Monsters and Strangers and Strangers and we made a version of it and we were really into it but for political reasons I think we weren't able to put it out

and we were like really bummed out about that and we ended up showing it to Anton and he was like here let me take the song and kind of massage it a bit and then we

sent it again back to everyone who needed to approve it and they were like, this is so great. So, then we were like, wow, we're actually going to get the song. And that just started this whole process of trying to find

the right vocalist, which took forever, as everyone knows. There were so many times when we thought the song would have this singer and it was about to come out and it was like, oh, they jumped off for this reason. And at the very end there, we didn't have a singer. And we were, like, one week away from filming the video for the Super Bowl commercial.

And Anton flew out to Nashville to record Marin and save the day. Yeah. Can you say who the other singers were? Yeah, it was Camel Cabello, Anne-Marie. There were so many. It was like DB Rex. Amazing how many of them. I would probably wish that they could have

stayed on it now that they saw how big it was, right? Yeah, I do wonder, like, especially, I mean, the two that were, like, we were going with was Camilla and, um, and Amory. And I understand, Camilla's, uh, wasn't the Havana was,

yeah, Havana was blowing up. Yeah, Havana was like, so she was like, she was like, she didn't want to ruin that. But yeah. What was the Ann Marie thing? Uh, she was on friends. with marshmallow. Yeah, so people

just didn't want to like kind of tank whatever because I guess that radio you only get like one spot. I don't know how it works. Well, it is it's rare. Now I would think Camilla

could probably do a feature at the same time as having her own. But at the time that was really sort of a breakout moment. So that makes sense. Yeah. But that is really interesting. It's like you, again,

you can't really put those things together because you would never, if in the beginning you said here's Marin who's a wonderful person, great voice, but is a totally different, it's such a departure. When you heard that first demo

when it was back when there were political reasons for you to not be able to release it, you know, that's a, if somebody said you would have this Marin song, you, you might not jump at that as being like, yes, that's the void. That's what we need.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Michael and I, to be honest, aren't like the biggest country music fans. So if someone were to just tell me, like, oh, a country singer is going to be on it, then I don't know that we would have been, like, super excited. But her voice is like, it's so insane. As artists, do you guys have, you know, What is success?

What is success for Gray? I mean, I've told you, like, at the beginning of this interview, all the horrible touring situations I've been in. And for me, I've never had a successful kind of touring career. So if we ended up in a spot where, yeah, we were getting, like, a bunch of shows all the time, I think that would be great for me. That would be like success.

What is your, you know, I know you guys because we've written together and we've spent time together. I don't really know what you're, I've never seen you guys perform. You know? So I'm not, you know, explain what your shows are like. I don't know if you're talking about, you know,

when you guys play, are you guys playing for 100 people, a thousand people a hundred thousand people a million people I mean I don't even know like if you guys were on tour right now what kind of places would you be playing

yeah so that's kind of part like part of what I'm saying where we I think our shows kind of followed the same trajectory as you know the big songs

in the sense that we were playing to like stadiums but it was because we were tour was that kind of thing. So I think that goes along with what I was saying before where I think we would have been better off doing it from the ground up and just playing for 20 people and then playing for 50 people instead of like our first shows we're playing for like 10,000 people, you know. Well, a lot of artists that I've met along the way, they get opportunities to open for,

they open for the opening act of Maroon 5 or go down the list of huge artists that have a bunch of people opening from it it's different in the DJ world because they do feel like people come a little like they see the whole show I know that more people come later but that's different than in a band setting people actually don't even show up often for the first

artists but I feel like with DJs there might be a win an opening for Anton. If you get to, you know, Anton being Zed for those who don't know. But if you're, you know,

if you have an opportunity to open for Zed, that that would be, um, that that would help a little or would it not work that way. I guess we will see. I don't know. We're still in the middle of our journey and, uh,

we're like I said, currently trying to see what happens if we just focus on doing everything from the ground up right now. So yeah, we'll see. Having seen the success of, you know, your songwriting and your production for other people is so massive. It's weird when that's somebody, it's often like somebody else's ambition. I mean, like in the songwriting industry, so many people wish they were in those shoes. but it almost sounds like you're like you were

wearing somebody else's shoes you know like that you don't look at the success of starving in middle as like you know if you were a production duo you can be on cloud nine with those kinds of successes but by being DJs don't think of it like that am I right? Well especially

like yeah we don't consider itself DJs either we this whole time we've just wanted to be artists ourselves and we kind of didn't understand that the world, like I said before, it doesn't understand what producers

do so producers aren't really seen as artists generally and we didn't realize that and it took us many years to be like, oh, you have to sing to be an artist basically so if that's what it takes then we're just going to learn

how to sing and that's what we've done how do you like singing on records? Is it vulnerable? It's like so much more fun than anything, I think. It's so hard, but it's so fun. Yeah. Does it put you in a place? You know, and by the way, when I'm saying DJ's stuff,

I guess my assumption, too, is that because even though I never wrote with you for you guys as a DJ, my assumption was just because of the relationship with Zed and the fact that you would tour with them that that meant you guys were DJs. Oh, yeah. Sorry, yeah, we never answered your question. When we played live with Zed, I was playing guitar, Michael's playing drums, and keyboard as well. And now that we're singing, when we go to play shows now,

it's going to be that plus us singing. So it's straight up just a two-person band, like 21 pilots kind of thing, you know. Yeah, I mean, that's amazing that you guys have a skill set that you can do that. Yeah. Do you guys want to release music, you know, is the goal to make the artist thing into a radio thing, or is the goal to make the thing into a touring thing?

Or are those the same? I think it's almost the same, but I don't think we're like specifically trying to do one or the other. I think we're just trying to make good songs and like trying to make quality of our vocals good enough to be on the radio or be listening to live. Yeah. We're just thinking

Spotify and Apple Music up kind of. So just starting with streaming and then shows will come out of that. And I'm not even thinking radio or anything like that. Yeah, the streaming thing is a different ambition too because

you know the like you were saying the fact that you guys have your name on connected to so many different artists my assumption is your monthly listenership is pretty extensive it's

you know just because of people connecting dots yeah yeah that's amazing avenue that didn't exist four years ago yeah that's great Okay, so let's go to the final section.

We're going to do a five for five. I'm going to list five things, and I'm curious, you know, first things that come off the top of your heads. All right. First one, Zed. He's an incredible mentor to us. Yeah.

Yeah. Some insane respect for him. I've never met him, but, you know, his success is pretty, pretty insane. Scrillix. Just so full of energy and like

yeah. I just love his his whole take on music and how he just kind of runs with the mistakes and it's kind of like a lot of what we do to just like go with the vibe and just like make mistakes and the mistakes are the best parts

of whatever you're making. Also, I've never heard anyone, anyone listen to music louder than him. It is insanity. It is like, to the point of you're like, I don't know if I could be in this room because it's that loud. It just wrecks your fucking bones, bro. It's crazy. Do you put in your plugs? What did you say?

Do you put in your plugs? Yeah, I had to put in earflugs. It was super talls. Yeah, insane. I can't handle being in studios like that I listen to music so quietly when I'm recording We like it loud We thought we liked it loud until we met him

I went on a cruise ship Like a rave cruise ship or something Like before any of this stuff started happening Like just the only reason that we knew him It was just from that first email We haven't done anything else since then And he just like saw me in the crowd And I was like just like a fan

just at the raid cruise ship and he like hold me on stage and he's like here come back to the artist area and then took off his VIP artist like past thing that was like had his name on it like this around his neck and he just gave it to me he's like here you can keep this for the cruise like the whole crew is just like

don't hang out whenever he's so cool and I was like dude that's crazy yeah I worked with him once that guy's brilliant yeah definitely it's pretty effortless all right next one Ableton Live isn't that what you produce off of?

Yeah. So let's go to Ableton. It's just so intuitive. It's funny, like, I've probably used five different Daws in my life, and every time you change somehow get better, you know? I don't know, at least for me, maybe I just picked the right kind of steps. But, like, when I moved from Logic to Ableton, my music just got in full. better and I was like this is my home so I love it okay the final two are kind of obvious but

each other um he's the uh he's the um what's called uh responsible one no I think I think he's way more like in the gritty very specific like working on very micro parts of songs in his head I think and I'm very much more like seeing it as a whole and I kind of have a lot more visual and I kind of think of things and like vibes or I think of it I kind of like see where the song is if there was a music video I just pretend like I'm like if I was going to see music video for the song where would it be in the world and what would be the sounds? And I kind of like think of like, I don't know, like an ambience and just like different things. But yeah, I don't know.

We definitely approach life and music differently. But it balances out well. Wait, why do you say that? If the last one is, you know, you for your brother. Let's see. I don't know. I think Michael's very much like a go with the flow kind of person, which makes him get along with people really well because he wants everything to be like chill.

And I'm very much like a devil's advocate kind of person. Like I will at any point try to make anything into an argument, not like a heated argument, but like a formal like, let's get to the bottom of this because that's what's exciting for me. and it's very off-putting to most people, I mean. They don't like it. Because it's not about him trying to prove that his point is right or their point's wrong. Like, whatever point someone's trying to make,

even if he agrees with their dozen agree with it, he just wants to do the opposite of that just to like see how, like, the conversation will go. Like, it's not like he's trying to prove anything. He's just like, okay, well, like, if you think that, I think the opposite. And if you think this, I still think the opposite. Do you naturally think the opposite? Or do you naturally think?

No, I just put myself into the shoes of someone who would feel the opposite of them because it's just more exciting to have a disagreement and then debate over it. And then at the end, maybe you learn something. And I don't know. That's how I am. So if I were to say right now, like, I think Ableton's the best. Do you naturally go, well, there's also. Yeah.

I'd be like, no, there's no comping in Ableton. Vocal. Come on. I'll just like put myself in another person's shoes, you know? Yeah. Do you comp vocals in Ableton? No, we actually have to, okay, so this is cool. This is very current, actually.

So we use Pro Tools to do all of our vocal stuff. But as of today, Ableton just adding vocal comping. So maybe, well, no more Pro Tools. I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of things that Vot Tools does super well. Well, it might be in Ableton now. Have you already tried? What did you say?

Have you already tried, Sorry, they released the video announcing it today and it comes out in January. But yeah. It's kind of exciting. Yeah, it is. It's weird how much those things in the in the songwriting, creating world, like those things really are genuinely exciting. Yeah. Like it gets exciting.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, guys, I appreciate you doing this. I'm glad I've had an opportunity to be in a studio with you guys. And it's, I don't, it's so, it's what you guys are saying. I don't think of you guys as remixes or DJs as like, what in the room because you guys collaborate in the room. You guys are musicians who are, you know, you had tracks to start from that were really cool.

But you were able to manipulate tracks to make them appropriate for the actual song. So you guys are songwriters and you guys are producers, which makes you guys artists. And the song that we did together didn't even sound like, you know, couldn't, it was in 6-8. Yeah. Like, it's so important that, like, I'm glad that we had a discussion where it really talks about you guys not being the same as the, those, those kind of like what you think of as, as, you know, DJs. because it's really not what you guys are and it isn't what you guys have been in sessions with me

and I, not to belittle that because that's cool too, but I like the fact that you guys are pursuing music. Yeah. Like you guys, you guys are doing it the right way and I'm excited to, you know,

to watch this journey and I'm happy you guys are releasing, you know, I know you guys have been working a ton on music and been releasing a lot more music as artists. And I love that you guys are pursuing that. I think it's great. So thank you.

Thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah, we actually just put out an EP and we have another EP coming out really soon. So look up for that. Keep doing it, man. Really appreciate you guys. Thank you, man. I'll see you at Air One.

Yeah. See you there. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, Be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website and and the writer is.com. If you like to...