Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - EP 305: Kendall Street Company

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

As Frasco finishes up road doggin with JJ Grey, Nick takes the mic to fill everyone in on exactly what he reaaaally thinks about Andy Frasco (spoiler: he thinks he's a great guy). And on the Interview Hour, we welcome the boys from hyper-prolific modern-day jam band, Kendall Street Company! This is a band that starts with a plan and finishes off with a touch of chaos. You know I was thinking- if Kendall Street Company was a meal, it’d be a buffet where you start with breakfast, accidentally hit a taco station, and in a psychedelic stupor, end the night by eating fondue off a former NFL cheerleader's six pack. You know the kind of night I'm talking about, right? WILD. Call, leave a message, and tell us how you lost your virginity: [phone]  Check out our new album!, L'Optimist on all platforms Follow us on Instagram @worldsavingpodcast For more information on Andy Frasco, the band and/or the blog, go to: AndyFrasco.com Produced by Andy Frasco, Nick Gerlach, Joe Angelhow, & Chris Lorentz Audio mix by Chris Lorentz Featuring: Mara Davis

Hey, this is Libba, Chapman's friend Denton's mom from North Carolina. I talked to Chapman and he told me that you gave him $300 and I want to thank you so much. That was so nice and making me laugh so much with your podcast. I think Steph's cereal bar is such a great idea so I'm so glad you were so much with your podcast. I think Steph's cereal bar is such a great idea so I'm so glad you were so generous with her and I hope to see you in Raleigh. Thanks a lot. Bye. Prasko, Jack from Darlington here. We opened up for you in Philly at the Fillmore in 2018 or 2019 along with LIT. So my virginity story is kind of a two-parter.

It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year high school. I was hooking up with the only openly bi cop chick at school at the time. We'd done everything but up to that point. And her online girlfriend from Connecticut came down who who was also bi, so we spent like a whole day hooking up all three of us. But that, however, was not the day that I would lose my V-card. The next day, the goth chick that I'd been seeing had to go to work, leaving her friend to hang out at her house alone. So I came over, and a dude friend of mine that was also hooking up with the goth chick also came over. So we both started hooking up

with the Connecticut girlfriend chick and then we both ended up losing our V cards to her and a devil's threesome while Motley Crue played from a Sony 3 CD changer as was the style at the time. When the goth chick found out she was pretty unhappy about the whole situation. Kind of broke up what was happening with me and her, the other guy and her, but I think it was still worth it and probably what awoke my bisexuality if I think about it. So yeah that's my story. I recently wrecked my band's band in the snow, so whatever the gift card prize here is just allows me to put more financial resources

into fixing that up and getting back on the road. Party on, Wayne. Hey everybody, how's your hearts? How's your minds? It's one of your favorite people here, Nick Gerlach. I know what you're all thinking to yourself. You're all thinking, where the fuck is Andy right now? I have good news for you. He will be here for the interview with Kendall Street Company. He's just a little busy traveling. He's coming home from his whirlwind tour opening for JJ Gray. They went all through the southwest and up california and um I haven't talked to andy about it yet

but I know the tour went well because I noticed there were a ton of pictures of him wearing a cowboy hat, which is generally A good sign. It's been fun watching him slowly morph into a jewish cowboy over the last six months I'm hoping to take him up to casper wy Wyoming this summer, maybe get him on a horse, see how he looks. I'm sure he'll look great. Today on the podcast, like I said, we have Kendall Street Company, a modern jam band from Charlottesville, Virginia.

I don't know that they're modern, but I definitely know they're a jam band. They have two guitar players and a saxophone. Interested in finding out how that's economically viable in today's music industry. So stick around for that interview. You know,'s gonna get some wild stuff out of him. Today, as always, our episode is sponsored by the great platform, volume.com. It's the number one streaming platform for artists and those who consume music. They have exclusive concerts you can buy tickets to. Sometimes they're even free. You can check out all of Andy Frasco

and the UN shows that are up there. You can see every single podcast we do with our video in studio on there for free. On top of that, I highly recommend subscribing to Only Frasco's, Only Frasco, Andy's new subscription program. We're gonna have bonus podcast content, bonus Monday morning motivation content.

I'll be throwing some trivia stuff up there, just all kinds of wild stuff at a very low price. So get on Volume now, get tickets, see your favorite band. And by the way, if you're a musician, there's no reason for you to not be using Volume to promote your stuff. It's literally free and it's some of the best quality. They have a great staff over there, some very professional people. Get on there as soon as you can. Okay, let's get of the best quality they have a great staff over there some very professional people get on there as soon as you can Okay, let's get to the interview. That's enough of me rambling

Here's Kendall Street Company and Andy Frasco. Goodbye. I love you. You're attractive. Oh also Try to relax the news is coming everybody pretty fast right now. There's a lot of eggs prices. There's a lot of gas price talk Let's just try to relax take 1520 minutes every day for ourselves. I recommend streaming Severance. That's a very good show I just finished this weekend, especially if you've ever worked in corporate culture. You'll either hate it or love it, but it's very well done. Anyway, here's Andy Frasco and Candlestreet Company. Goodbye. I love you. Candlestreet Company. Hey. How you doing? Hello. Pretty good. Pretty good. Doing well today. Wonderful. How's Denver-Trenia? Great. Great so far. It's great.

It's great. It's lovely. It's so lovely. There's snow on the ground. We went to a museum. We learned stuff about chairs and stools and yes stools samples lounges So let's get to the trauma who hates each other which one you guys hate each other. Let's go. Let's get Let's go. Let's get it. I mean we we all hate each other, but I'm pretty sure everyone hates me the most It's funny because Brian was just saying right before we started recording that Back when he was in elementary school they do that the game where the teacher would start clapping you know that that guy yeah and then they would respond with yeah yeah and he was like

that was a good tactic that worked for me and we're like damn that's good to know because it's always difficult to get his attention because he's always doing the sports gambling and the this and that yeah yeah he told me last night you're a degenerate gambler. Oh, yeah. Mostly used to be. It was taking away time from my practicing. So I actually have stopped mostly doing it,

which it's been nice. Maybe dabble back into it sometime. But once you start looking at the lines on third division, like European soccer, you're like, what am I doing with my life? I'm like, Brian, you You gotta practice bass sometimes. You're always you're always sports gambling Brian we had a whole intervention it was yeah it was fucked he he almost quit the band. Yeah but then he but then he quit

gambling. Yeah what what do you think harder what do you think harder gambling on your life is either gambling a parlay or being in a band. That's a good point. Honestly, honestly, if you're choosing, if you're a young person right now listening to this and you're choosing between joining a rock band or gambling and drinking a lot of alcohol, you should definitely gamble and drink a lot of alcohol. So you're telling me I should go for the lines, parlay. Let's go. We love to hear it. Oh God, the clapping.

I'm so distracted. So how'd you guys meet? Tell me the story. What's going on? Yeah, we met in college at UVA, University of Virginia. Kind of through various friends and connections. Started playing all the bars in town, all the trap parties. Any gig we could get our hands on, really. Just as much as we could. our hands on really just as much as we could. What uh what like who met each other first like who saw each other at

the bar like what happened let me see that thing. I saw they were 19 so they weren't drinking yet but uh you're 19? That was against the law. I think you were 18 right? We just started college I so here's the whole here's the whole fucking story I'll give it to you me and the our original sax player. We went we we went to college together We room together. We started playing Together we met Brian through like this Oh records, which is like this student run record label. Yeah Well, then I ran into you. Oh, yeah

His house we had never met him before and we didn't meet him that night. But his house was throwing a party and we ran in. We ran into each other and he was like, yeah, I need a bass player. So that then so I showed up. Yeah. And we were you know, we were we were young lads and in college and strapping, young, having a good time, very slender. Time has not been good to us. We were like in that jack in a box road trip. Otherwise, cook out down the street. That's what it is. Oh, man. Slender time has not been good to us Cook out down the street. That's what it is. Oh man

We met Ryan the drum at the drum line I met him really wasted once he likes to tell the story. He loves the story. I Don't even remember the story. I love I love the story The original saxophone player in the band takes the the new the second saxophone I'm the young buck by new I mean what seven years now Yeah, but we're still hazing him because he's still the newest member Player and I were in the marching band together. I was on drumline My house two parties very often they came Anyway one day at a party

often they came. Anyway, one day at a party, a saxophone player comes up to me and he's like, Oh, I play in a band with, with my roommate. You should join our band. And I'm like, Oh, okay, buddy. Okay. Okay. And I go in and see Lewis like blackout drunk and he's just, you know, a goofy dude. I love him. So he doesn't remember this. What'd you see in him that made you fall in love with him? Well, I gave him, I got his number. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a joke. Well, I didn't know anything about this guy. So I get his number.

Well, you knew he liked alcohol. The following weekend, I was at a different house party and him and Brian and the original sax player, just the three of them were playing a gig there without a drummer and I saw him play and it was like oh these guys are actually pretty legit Yeah, I walked up to Lewis and was like do you still need that drummer? Oh, I was like give me your number and I was like it's already in your phone. I would I would have been like you backpedaling son of a bitch. I see I see

Now we're cool I would have been like you backpedaling son of a bitch. I see I see Right on stage almost Almost but then I decided we'll give this guy a chance. So when you guys all got together How was that? Well, tell me about the first show. Give me the first experience of all you guys together I remember you being really really late for like an ROTC function we got booked. It was it was you being like not in the morning. Yeah it was we got booked for like a 9 a.m. ROTC UVA event or something to play like smooth jazz in the background because that's what they thought we were because I only played upright bass at the time I didn't play electric. And so so we were

I show up and I had never met the keyboard player before yeah So so I show up and we're there and it's like 9 a.m. We're supposed to start playing and Lewis is nowhere to be found He's not answering his phone. He's the one who booked it. So you got these military guys being like, you know dressed up Like when are you guys gonna start playing? What's you know, what's going on here? And we're just like, I don't know, man. Like we just met each other. They're panicking. Like, what the fuck? What? You guys know, right?

You know, you know, Spain, I was hung over. It's true. I skipped class for that gig. I did a lot of learning and did you guys graduate from UVA? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll clap to that gig. I did a lot of learning in college. Did you guys graduate from UVA? Yeah. I'll clap to that. Let's fucking go. We got our degrees. So what was the moment in your career where you realized

that I want to take this on the road? Was there a show? We had been crushing it in college. We used to do like we would play like Thursday at fraternity houses. We'd play do like, we would play like, at fraternity houses we'd play Thursday night, Friday afternoon, Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday.

Like the whole weekend was filled with gigs. We didn't know what we were supposed to charge, so we were charging like 300 bucks in beer, which is awesome when you're like 19 or 20 years old. That's actually good money. Yeah, yeah. Pretty good. At the end of the week, we'd be like,

oh we worked all weekend, but we we each made $300 like, you know Yeah, never yeah We never never got together to practice if we wanted to learn something new we would just do it at 2 a.m When everybody at the party was too drunk to Drunk to judge us for doing poorly on it. Yeah, so what is this forgiving a forgiving? to judge us for doing poorly on it. Yeah. So it was a forgiving upcoming. Yeah.

They didn't mind if we were shit. But it got to the point, we're all kind of different years in college. Ryan and I are the oldest. And so it got to the point when we were graduating, we kind of had to make the decision, are we gonna stay and do this thing or go? And so we decided to stay,

like we mentioned our old saxophone player, Andrew Drehaf. Wow he's a he's a physical therapist now rest in peace yes exactly great guy um and what happened did he quit in a rage of fury give me that detail no he just said hey i'm graduating you know he went to he went to pt school man he wanted he wanted to do his masters his thing but it's all of his life you know he like, I'm putting the band in touch, boys. Yeah, I mean, the best story is how we met Jake here. Yeah, Louis' mom met Jake on Craigslist. I met Louis' mom on Craigslist. Really?

She thought I'd be a good fit for her son. And I was. It's just the right size. Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack. Is she hot or something? Like, you went on a date with her? You know, we kind of moved beyond that in our relationship now. It's a little bit different. It's more platonic now

Oh, Jake is fucking with me. Just Jake is constantly hitting on all of my family And me I can't say that Hit on my sister hit my dad hit on my mom he he told me once that my grandma was giving him looks That 100% happen with her boyfriend right next to her too. Hold on, wait, backtrack, backtrack, backtrack. I remember it. Hold on, do you beat off the older women born? It's not my fault, you know they're attracted to the non-committal aspect of being in a band. I have a thing, because I have a thing with older women. I believe it dude, you said Cougars I like her's for frasco right yeah making

sure cougars for frasco my management declined that so I can't make sure to be able to pull that out and also okay so I want to hear his story of how he got in the band he's the youngest by like seven years right yeah yeah well um I think I'm the youngest Ben our, our guitar player, is the second youngest. He's played with my mom, my grandma, my brother. But I was I was going to college. I grew up in Northern Virginia and was going to UVA. And I had been playing like, you know, jazz gigs in and around Northern Virginia and D.C. in a little bit.

And I wanted to keep playing. But I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, really. And Craigslist had been great for me up there. I got a lot of fun things on Craigslist. I know that sounds really weird. I got a bunch of instruments on Craigslist. That was my main use of it So this was before they took away the casual encounter section of course. Oh my god. I might be the impetus for that And so I posted I was like going down to Charlottesville and I knew I wanted to keep playing so I posted I was like

I play saxophone looking to join a band or something like that and I thought it was Lewis that founded it first, but I it was Lewis's mom. My mom knew we were looking. My mom knew we were looking! We're a sax player. Hold on, so how cool, okay give Mike, I want to hear about your relationship with your mom so what's your relationship with your mom? It's a, we have a great relationship. Yeah, yeah, we do. I have a I have a really good I feel really lucky. Had a really good like supportive family.

My mom my dad. Yeah, I'm glad they invited me into the family. She's an environmental advocate. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And I wish we talked more sometimes but like, you know, that's not you know, that's on me. You got Carl, you know know You get older and you realize It's a two-way street. Yeah, sometimes like we get offended when I like I don't know

I'm just speaking in my relationship with my parents Sometimes we get offended when they don't call or check up on you like fuck you. I'm not gonna check on you either You know like but we have to take initiative for 30 year old fucking men exactly Call your mom call your mom your mom you. Yeah exactly Call your mom call your mom. Tell your mom you love her. I know you're listening call your mom. Yeah, stop playing with his mom She's a good lady So was she proud was she proud of you making decision to follow your dreams I think so I think both my parents were proud. I think it was, I went to UVA. I started in the architecture school. My mom was really psyched about me being an architect. I didn't want to do that though. The music stuff had

been picking up and I was spending all my time in the architecture studio. So I decided I'm going to do physics. I'm going to be a physicist. Fuck it. Let's go. Yeah, I know. You think it's crazy, but this is what I was. Yeah, good brain. I was like, I took this class with how things work, and I was like, OK, theoretical physics. I got like 100%. It was great.

Then I figured out you got to do math. I was like, fuck. OK, so and then I was like, OK, I'm just. As an interjection, how things work is the mathless physics class at UVA. Yeah. There's no math in the class at all. Theoretical physics.

It's like, is this bus too tall? Is the bus going to fall over? You're like, looks like it is. And that's important in touring life. You need to know if the bus is too tall when you're driving around the country. Or if you're having a meltdown. When is it to pull the fucking cord? Alright, so take this philosophy of how you're approaching your musical career. Let's see.

The bus is pretty tall. The bus is tall. I tend to have a good idea of if the bus is too tall. Louis is our resident mechanic for the bus as well. Yeah, I've got a buddy in Virginia Beach. I'm from Virginia Beach and that's with the namesake of the band Kendall Street is a street in Virginia Beach and so Kendall Street is the place the company's the people good place with good people. The environment and the people there inspired a lot of like the first

songs and music and stuff that we released and awesome So but so I got a buddy in Virginia Beach. He is a mechanic Not by trade. He is actually a pool guy, but he's like he's like incredibly gifted And he fixes his own cars and and you know, and he drifts his own cars Virginia Come on man, we're going drifting and playing jam band music playing modern jam band music I saw that on online. Yeah, I'm not crazy. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, so keep going with this I don't know where am I? Okay

He fixes the car sometimes he helps and taught me how to get into changing the oil just like being generally more because like before I was you know, you just kind of cruise along and you're like well the tires shocks are fucked and we haven't changed the oil and 15,000 miles and the vans broken and and transportation is a huge part of being in a touring band. If you can't tour, you can't go to the place, you can't play for the people and you end up just sitting around making videos and that's cool. And that's cool too, you know, but like amazing.

We're trying to find a balance there, you know, between touring and making videos because making videos is really important. Right. And you know, because you can reach a wide audience, and you don't have to be out on the road and getting tired and getting too tired and stressed. Anyways. Do you guys fight a lot?

You guys are the budding heads? We have in the past. Yeah. They used to live together, and I lived with them for one year. You ever beat the shit out of each other? No, we're not that physically violent people. Thankfully, nobody in the band will hit anybody because we'd be fucked up.

Like, faces would be, we'd just fuck with our eyes. Oh, you're passive aggressive. Why'd you play that? We're very passive aggressive, you know. I would leave like a fork in the sink, you know. Dude, you would leave shit everywhere. A would leave like a fork in the sink, you know, and then you would leave Come on man He kicked a hole in the in the bathroom wall I

Smelled so I felt oh my god I tripped over the bath mat in my butt put a hole in it. But it was a big hole, but it was nice because it made the bathroom so much more spacious. That's some college boy shit. It was there for a while. No, I was definitely like 24 at the time. All right, righteous gemstones over here.

What's that movie with Adam Sandler? Oh, Uncut Gems. Uncut Gems, That's a great film. You love that because it's a fucking degenerate ass game. Let me talk to you about this. But this is okay because I like this parallel. You think long term, right? You're a long term thinker?

Yes. You think short term with the betting. That's true. Yeah, I'd say, I mean, I think a little long term, but like, you know, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, well that's what I mean. It's like you need both. I think in a band, you, Sean and Mia are the same way.

I think long term, he thinks fucking burn the candle, baby. Question for you, I want to talk about your relationship with your mother and dad eventually. But first, have you ever like bet, like you guys are like really broke, and have you ever like bet all the band money on a gambling thing, and to try to double your wins to try to get through the road?

We have joked about it, but sort of on that vein. So we've never actually done it, you know, like just put it all in black or put it all in red. But there was actually one time in Kansas City we stayed because sometimes when you're on the road, staying at casinos is kind of a move because the rooms are subsidized, right? They charge you less because they think you're going to gamble. And then they have like pretty good security. So you get a nice hotel experience for the price of a motel six. So if it's on the route, you know, so we're staying at this,

this like please God be on the route. They didn't have poker at that casino. So I wanted I wanted to play poker, which I prefer to like table games and stuff. So I went to another casino. And that was like 10 miles away played poker, I think it made a couple 100 bucks or something came came back. And by then it was like we were leaving at 8am and it was like 4am. So I was like, I don't want to wake everybody up in the hotel. So I'm just gonna crash in the van weather was fun

So so I go crash in the van and like not 30 45 minutes later I get woken up by the super loud Ford F-150 that is this guy comes out He starts going for the trail like he's gonna break the trailer off or whatever and what yeah So so I I bang on the window and and he You know freaks out and leaves if his car wasn't so loud And what? Yeah. So, so I, I bang on the window and, and he, you know, freaks out and leaves if his car wasn't so loud, I might've slept through it. And then we found out that the side door was broken. So what had happened is I guess they had come to case it.

They looked inside this and wow, there's a lot of valuable shit in here. So let's come back later at 5 a.m. And then the parking lot of the casino. So I run out of my car, try to get out of the van or whatever, try to get his license plate. I'm like in my underwear in the parking lot I believe in that serendipitous shit yeah no it's weird it's like if I

weren't there you know they would have died. Our livelihood. Stole all of our shit, we would have died. I gotta say this to keep my sponsorship. If you are a gambling addict, call 1-800-GAMBLING. Yeah, I think I did say earlier in the podcast, I'm like, you shouldn't join a band, you should gamble all your money away and drink alcohol. I don't actually believe that.

Is that number for gambling help? Or do you want to go to a casino for a free ride to the casino. High 1 in 100 gambling? We're betting on the Indonesian horse track today, brother. You want in? You want in? I thought this was a gambling hotline. All right. I think this story is very interesting. You won $20, a gambling hotline. Alright, I think this story is very interesting.

You won $20,000 gambling on DraftKings. I did actually, and it's the one big last win. It was the last score, I guess it was really nice. Because I quit doing. It was the last score. The last call. I quit gambling a few months ago, but I had already entered this pool of, you know,

the survivor tournament or eliminator tournament where you pick a team every week to win. And you can't pick the team that's already been picked. So for the whole NFL season, I got the first 17 picks right. And I was like, all right, I got to hedge this. And then the final week I picked the Falcons, the Falcons lost to the Panthers. So I'm glad I hedged it. I could have won a little bit more if the Falcons won but still I'm happy with that have savings now that's good and it's nice everyone in the bands like

you'll come bro 10 bucks yeah so if you guys need a little dough, we're doing the scholarship. It's called this Kendall Street Company scholarship. He will be donating some of his proceeds from his gambling addiction to a lucky winner. Call the podcast and see if you want. Give us a great explanation why you need the 25 bucks. And it's the $25 scholarship. You need to really need the scholarship. It's enough to get you about a third of a lesson.

It's only one percent. In whatever instrument you'd like. Yeah. Okay, so before we move on to each band, because I'm going to interrogate all of you. Even you, you look suspicious. I like this guy. I like this guy. Your mom and dad.

Yeah. You're like, hey, I'm going to be in a band. Also, I'm going to be a gambler. How is your relationship with your parents? Honestly, it's great. I love my parents. I'm Exactly. If you if you take them, I'm half of each of them combined and It's it's kind of funny because they fucked up Hard because I tried to quit bass when I was a kid really I tried to quit but they were like no you made a commitment

you got to stick with it, that's cool, I like to remind and then also they're both attorneys and When I was going to college they were like don't don't go to college to be an attorney Don't do it. Fuck and I was like, okay, you told me not to be a lawyer You told me to keep playing bass. So I went to college and started I did foreign affairs I wanted to go into intelligence analysis and After about a year of that. I was like screw this and I and I ended up, you know, I was in the orchestra, different music ensembles joined this band, a couple other bands and stuff, I was just doing it all,

and I was like, why don't I just make this my job? I don't need to be super wealthy, I just wanna have fun with life, and they've always been really supportive with it. But then also at the graduation, we had like Ed Helms, the comedian, do the convocation speech or whatever. And he was making fun of Cav Man, our mascot. And he was saying-

Is this at UVA? Oh cool. And he was like, Cav Man looks like a guy who's been hanging around Charlottesville for the last 20 years waiting for his jam band to make it big. He said that to the whole audience of my parents. And this one we're all like, oh man.

That's my son! I'm like, oh man. You know? That's my son! I'm like, yeah, that's what it's gonna be. But no, they're super supportive, and I mean, I couldn't be doing what I'm doing. You gotta have supportive family. Like, or, or. Or not.

Or not. Nothing in the middle, though. Yeah, if you have a really unsupportive family, then you can use that as inspiration, right? That's true. But if your parents are like kind of cool with it, that's the middle though. Yeah, if you're a really unsupportive family, then you can use that as inspiration, right? That's true. But if your parents are like kind of cool with it, that's the middle zone. You never want to be in the middle zone.

You never want to be one foot in the door, one foot out of the door, when it comes to anything in life. My parents gave me a year. They cut me off. After a year, I'm like, that kind of gave me drive to like, I'm going to do this myself, fuck it.

I'm not going to like live off sucking the teat of my parents yeah and it kind of gave me driven that's good you're next I love my parents too I love my parents too I love Brian's parents and Lewis's parents and Ryan's parents and Ben's parents yeah but you like love my parents so they're very lovable people when you because you joined the band what 19 I joined the band when I was 18 Yeah, so what'd your parents say about this? They well I had already been doing the music industry thing for a little bit on my own up in the DC area

I started I got in the industry doing DJ stuff when I was in high school I was DJing other high school dances and middle school dances. Me too. And it was really fun and pretty easy, relatively speaking. I just played the music I liked and they paid me for it and I got to set up big speakers and it was cool. Oh, so you're making money. Your parents are like fucking.

I was making money in high school, decent money in high school. And then I stopped doing that when I went to college, basically, just because I didn't have the network. And I joined these guys and we were doing a lot of different other things. I remember the first time I played with them was a frat party it was like just some cardboard on the ground and I was like, okay, like this could be a good life And yeah, yeah, that was a fun day.

I learned about Venmo that day. I had never been Venmo'd or anything and Brian taught me how to do it. Learned a lot from these guys. What about Lock-In? Give him his first cigarette, give him his first beer. Lock-In, Lock-In was one of his first gigs

and that was a big one. Lock-In was the next summer, but yeah, yeah. That was 2017, that was my first music festival and I was playing at it. So I got the VIP experience. It was great. And it's in Virginia where your hometown is? Yeah, I was like 45 minutes away from Charlottesville.

It was great. It was sick. All downhill from there, huh? I'll say real fast, this Lock & was amazing. We won this like battle of the bands thing to get to, to play Lock & 2017. They put us on the Thursday night on the stage that like swivels around and so it was us in 2017 and right behind us was Umphreys

McGee and we had like a 30 minute set to like 10,000 people and the stage flips around and Umphreys starts playing behind us and it was very memorable. It was really interesting downhill from there. I didn't really know much about Jam Bands when I joined them. It wasn't part of my culture growing up. It wasn't part of my parents culture at all really. And so I remember on that lock-in I didn't know a single name on the lineup. I had to google every single one and it was great and I learned a lot. I didn't Consider you guys a jam band. I think I can your songwriters I don't know how to describe it. We've said we're like genre fluid or whatever. It's we're kind of on the fringe of jam We do jam we do write some jammy songs, but you're like the closest to our band that I've ever seen

We're pretty song folks. I mean we have like a lot of songs 120 30 songs Thank you Was so interesting I thought that they put us on the cover but But you know, that's what modern jam is maybe less Eyes of the world done up a little bit differently. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna do Susanna, but we're gonna spread it out a little bit. All right, sir, let me pass the mic.

Yeah, I love my parents, yeah. Yeah. Nice, yeah. Then what, do you guys have any drama? Just siblings. I mean, it's been so many years of, I mean, like, I think we played 118 shows last year, and it's been that way pretty much every year. So you just, I mean, you know how it is.

You just have to get used to cohabitating with these people, you know? Yeah. I mean, you're in a relationship, and you don't fuck each other. Well, I don't know, maybe you all do. You never know. We would sleep in the same room.

I snore, I wake everyone up, apparently. You all hate, they all feel horrible the next time. Right, right, and also farts and wakes people up, though, too. Oh snore, I wake everyone up. Apparently they all hate, they all feel horrible the next time. Brian also farts and wakes people up though too. So, Oh, my farts wake me up because I'm allergic to everything. I have oral allergy syndrome. I'm allergic to oral. Yeah.

Nice thing is though, is that Brian and I, when we get hotel rooms, Brian and I'll get our own. Cause we snore. Wait, where the snore around? And they, and they, they have to split the other one. Oh, so you get two rooms. But it's secret. You two and one. Yeah. And then four. Don't tell, but don't tell them because they don't. Oh, these guys are mind fucking me right now. These guys probably don't even snore. It's better that way. They're telling you they

snore. Yeah. I actually, I actually for several years would just wake up, you know, I'm kind of a sociopath. So I wake up in the middle of the night and then snore super loud on purpose so that they thought I'm a snorer so that they'd throw me in the less crowded room. Damn, it all comes out now. It all comes out of Franskos. Yeah, you guys need to fucking take the power back. Yeah.

They're out here beading off alone in these rooms. You guys are four to a bed, gang banging a toilet. I go to their room to beat off and then I go back to our room. I didn't know that! That's fucked! That's kind of cool. Okay, let's get, I want to get a little serious now. What are, what are, um, what's the hard parts about being in a band that no one really talks about? That no one talks about? I mean, it's like being in a band,

people think that the glorious part is the being on stage, but that's like the tiniest little percentage of the whole being in a band. It's more about running a small business, learning how to be a mechanic on your van, being a driver for yourself, having siblings that you didn't grow up with yeah yeah let me let me lay it out there

ticket fees man the fucking man coming and shitting on us taking all of our shit taking fucking 40% on top of that like our fans are paying that they don't know they're not that everyone thinks like oh my god These guys are so successful. I'm paying 40 bucks for their ticket. I'm so they must be doing great But you know, it's no everyone's inflating ticket price Everyone's inflating their cost of being a band besides the guarantees that we're actually getting yes the same amount of money It's like you're making the same amount of money. This is what I have. This is fucking bullshit. Bus companies are more, the fucking the venues that are like kind of like pieces of shit venues are like all of a sudden charging live nation venue

size. They have to compete. Like no don't I love independent venues but like everyone's inflating and they're still giving us the same guarantee. It's not fair. Yep and the percentage is not going up either. Yeah the ticket prices have increased just like across the board like any other price of any other good or service or anything over the past 10 years but the difference is just that all of that money is getting sucked up by ticket fees and venue fees and it's crazy that you can pay $40 for a ticket. And the beer is $11? What the fuck?

And the band doesn't get a cut of the beer, you know, unless you're Jimmy Buffett or whatever. And the problem with inflating up and coming bands is we can't afford to build a scene because everyone, if we're inflating our numbers, everyone wants to go see Tyler Childers and fucking Taylor Swift and Sturgill Simpson and they they're a hundred, and it's Billy, and they're 150 bucks. So like- People are spending all their- We're broke, everyone's broke.

And how do you develop a market, how do you develop a music scene if everyone's broke? You can't. Can't. You gotta be broke. That's why you see a lot of bands going on hiatus, a lot of bands breaking up. It's just too expensive to go on tour.

So what do we gotta do? We all have to fucking level the playing field and play fucking ball. Well, it's like first they came for, they came for our streams, right? You know, they like, it was back in the day you can make money touring and you could make money by selling your music, selling your records or whatever. And then that became a, you know, streaming thing where, you know, you're getting fractions of a penny for every play that somebody, you know, your favorite listener makes you maybe a buck in a year if you're lucky. And so it's like, oh, well, the live scene is where you make all the money,

but now all that money is getting sucked out of it. And so it is really a struggle to. Yeah. And we've been dealing with a couple things here is like one, we're thinking like, okay, so maybe we should tour a little bit less make more videos make more make the shows more valuable you know uh so that's one thing we're trying to strategize a little bit in 2025 and then the other thing is uh you know

selling which pigeons started doing selling these ticket packages on their website, you know, so it goes direct to us. You know, we're, yeah, and that kind of vibe. They taught us VIP too, I'm like, holy shit. It's just a way to combat Ticketmaster Live Nation, just like trying to own some of the, some of the means of getting people in the door. Means of production? It's what? Means of production.

Some of the means of production. I looked this up about, cause we used what's a square and Squarespace to process transactions like on our website the fees are like, you know It comes out to end up being about 3% and I looked that up and apparently 3% is seen as really high for online payment Processing and yet on your tickets you're paying like 40 50 percent and like 3% is industry wide a high number like that's great Why are you paying more fees? Like you know you can go on Cole's website or whatever and find a shirt. You're paying a 2%

processing fee and then you go onto a venue place and you're paying 40% and people are just like oh yeah whatever. Yeah and the thing is like you know we're just we're just trying to get out here and make it and be able to play music. We're trying to just afford to be able to fix our bus and be comfy and have a hotel room. And the business aspect, you were saying, what's the hardest thing or what are some of the hardest things? That is some of the hardest things

and we're out here running our own business and I wanna be fucking playing guitar and writing songs. A lot of my... You said everything that involves the business. You didn't say one thing about the music. And that's the problem! But the beautiful thing is we had music together and we worked together.

Maybe if we didn't have to focus on business so hard, our music would go down the hill. Because then we'd have enough time to fucking bicker about whatever this chord is, you know? I don't know. I mean, we get to that bickery place sometimes with the songs, but we're pretty good about like everyone in the band writes music. Sometimes we write it together.

Sometimes we write it separately and bring it to the band or whatever. But it's a pretty egalitarian thing. And that's also part of how we wind up with so many different sounds and vibes. And we all like a lot of the same stuff, but's pretty diverse music tastes overall and so a lot of the time we'll go to the studio and I mean we've even we've gone to the studio and said we're only gonna record stuff we've never done before like we're gonna write everything here and do it you know other times it's something that's really polished that we've worked on other times it's you know what makes sense at

the time or whatever but it's it's nice that you know, as many disagreements we might have about what manufacturer to go through for the new t-shirt order or whatever, we do a pretty good job of not getting too cutthroat about the music. Sometimes in the studio, things happen, you know, you can get into pretty big arguments about like, just one note, you know,

because music is art and it's hard to do art, but at least I think we all have a respect for each other that it's because it's art, it's, you know, because music is art and it's hard to do art, but at least I think we all have a respect for each other, that it's because it's art, it's, you know, there's no inherently wrong answers to it, like there might be to a t-shirt order, even though we're still trying to do our best there too. And it's important to care about art, because when we're gone, that's what's gonna,

that's our time stamp of how we had our years on life or how we picked our years, you know? So, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna clap to that. Let's go. Let's clap. Let's go, boys. I like it. You work hard.

You beat off in the van just to fucking write a song eventually. You gotta do what you gotta do. Eventually. That's the problem. You mean? I mean, you're making a marketing budget for events can write a song eventually. I mean, you're making a marketing budget for events. So you can eventually write that great hit. So let's talk about the song writing a hair, you know, it's like who, who writes majority of the songs.

This year it was mostly Lewis with a little bit of Brian towards the end of the year, mostly because we did a single every month for 2024. Oh wow. 12 singles, 12 months. That's cool. Yeah and they're all over the place. You know there's a few themes that go on, you know like month to month perhaps but I feel like a lot of this year was Louis. Louis.

And Ben, our guitar player who is not here today wrote a good number of them too. He's a great songwriter as well. So how do you know which song makes the record? We just put them all out. Let's let the dog talk to that. Let's go. Modern Jam Band, baby! Fuck it, quantity over quality, let's go, baby.

Honestly, that's sometimes the approach. It's just, it's so easy to get so in the weeds of a piece of art trying to make it perfect and I can guarantee you that there's going to be something you have wrong with it anyway. Yeah. And no matter how much you go into it, it's never gonna be that perfect thing you want. Two years later you're gonna listen back and be like damn I should have done this instead of that. Yeah. So it's kind of like why go through that incredible painstaking process

where you're just gonna end up with something and you end up with the too why go through that incredible painstaking process where you're just gonna end up with something and you end up with the too many cooks in the kitchen problem too where like everybody's like, make this a little louder, make this a little quieter and it's like, well, it must be in a good place if some people are saying louder and some people are saying-

We're a democracy. You are. That's how our band works. That must be hard sometimes. That's why you need like a leader. It takes shit, it takes so long to do shit. I know. And it's like, hey, is this done? It so long to do shit. I know it's like hey is this done It's like three weeks later. No, it's not done. Okay. I guess we're doing this. Yeah, we split up

Realties it's pretty cool. That's good. We split the royalties in it in a way that's it's weighted a little bit I'm up with the system. That's like, you know kind of socialist but also kind of rewards the effort But there's a baseline royalty every band member gets on every song That's like like even if you're like you could be in bed in the studio and not there for the entire recording process You know and you're still gonna get that baseline royalty because it's like the decision not to play or the decision to contribute or whatever It's like the decision not to play is so Underrated yeah as a sax player like when I play, it's more important than when I play it. Yeah.

I mean, you don't have to be like, I tell my band this because I haven't written a lot of songs for these last couple, last couple of records with them. And just because they have wives and getting busy or sometimes I just don't need sax or sometimes I don't need a shredding guitar solo. Sometimes I just want acoustics or strings. So it's like, it's like kind of like, gotta get your ego out of it to serve the song. However we could serve the song is the most important thing

we should always be thinking about. Not just if I'm fucking playing the bass part, if I'm fucking playing the stack, no. Serve the song always. And we even, we switch instruments sometimes. Like there's a couple songs we released recently where like Lewis played the bass part Yeah, let's fucking whatever. So so it's We don't release everything because we think everything's great. Yeah, you know, we release it

We release it because we think it's good, you know I'd say somebody in the band thinks it's great and it's worth releasing so we release it Yeah, but and depending, you know it doesn't really matter like everybody, everybody's relation to the song, because I think an important thing is just reaching people, and like, there's some songs that like, I'm like, that's dumb, but like, it's like the best shit. Like, Katzen's a House is one of our songs,

or I do this like, German accent. And when Ben wrote this, it brought it to us. I got 1946, I'm thinking about 1946, every time you hear that German accent, I'm like, oh shit, they're coming for me. Oh no, thinking, I'm thinking about 1946 every time you hear that German accent, I'm like, oh shit, they're coming for me. Oh no, I'm just kidding. This is Jewish.

It's something that we, you know, we figured, we figured half. Hell yeah. My dad is Jewish and we did, my, my, Ben, Ben would say, you know, Ben would say you're half. Ben is Jewish. I think your grandma is Jewish too, right? Grandma is Jewish. Yeah, I knew that. And you know, we did the Passover, Hanukkah, that good stuff. Went to Sunday school and things growing up. It hasn't been a big part

of my life. Oh, nice. But, or I mean, it has been a big part of my life, but not necessarily in the religious aspects, like in very much in like the family aspects like my family Extended is pretty big and like on my dad's side. Everybody's really kept in touch and like that's been cool Anyways, I thought cats in the house was so dumb. Everybody loves it people fucking go bonkers for cats in the house It's almost like it's funny it's kind of like, what does the fox say? Yeah. It's just like, you know, the cats in the house and I go, meow, you know.

Yeah. It's Dogs in a Pile's favorite song of ours. Those fucking weirdos. I have a feeling that's a favorite song. Yeah, Jeremy, that needs to be fucking, probably loves that song. And then like, you know, you got the, you also got like quirky songs, but you also got um Thoughtful heartfelt songs like I said I watch your set of Cervantes And you and Lewis you just showed up acoustically and this the lyrics were really good. Thank you, man

You should play more of those songs. Thank you That's don't be scared to be vulnerable. That's something we actually like on one of my New Year's resolutions has been like sort of a recommitment to the art and the music and because I got I just got so bogged down in the business man and I and I said just like a recommitment to making the music, practicing, connecting with myself and my emotions, writing that music and those lyrics and like digging into that more and setting aside real time for that. The solo acoustic thing is something we'd kind of just started as, you know, because I feel like we've been wanting to put ourselves out there as like, as a jam band so that we

can get in with this scene and stuff like that. But like at a certain point, you know, we gotta be really, we gotta be true to ourselves. Like that's what people connect with and that's what people fucking wanna see. They don't wanna see something that they've seen before except for they do, which is the tough thing. Like, you know, there's a million Grateful Dead

cover bands out there doing really well. And, but at the same time, same time, it's not about them. And that's the whole dichotomy of having to be so deeply involved in the business where I have to be thinking about an audience as opposed to making art for myself. So I'm trying to connect more with the art for myself kind of thing yeah, and just be who we are and have our sense of humor and Cut out a niche of people who will dig into it, you know, cuz it's not for everybody. Totally as a nice little fucking Hills and valleys baby. Yeah, you need that in a set, you know

It's easy to get bogged down and be like, oh, a big crowd, like, it's gotta be super hype all night. And it's like, just cause it's, I mean. We're at a festival, we gotta fuck. Yeah. Fuck them in the head. Short set or, and you know, get in the songs you need. That's what it's hard, it's hard when you fall into, like, it gets tough, I think, for us to play

those shorter sets because we, with the kind of breadth of, like, you know know we have songs that are really fun like you know you're so high I'm an oyster my name is Stanley bird dog mouth right like that's fucking right it's like you got to put that you know I got a good credit to my high school buddy who we were in high school my friend was having a party and I was incredibly high and my friend Carson pops his head over the couch goes years so high I'm an oyster and that stuck with me for many years and I think about

you know this was high school this was 2011 about 2017 or 2018 we go and cut that song you know so I love that that little fucking tidbit him popping his head over I'm just like what I think it was 2019 record 2019 yeah the nautical yeah the nautical aquatic not a crazy tree nautical aquatic high is when you get really blazed like you know some hybrid we and then you just like go into the water and the water feels like yeah I kind of like that we call it the nautical-aquatical high That's where that came. I was probably one of our most tense trips. Yeah Like that we were like we were all sleeping on top of each other

The apartment was like the size of this it was like the whole apartment. It was it was kind of moldy The apartment was like the size of this interview room. Like the whole apartment with the bathroom. It was kind of moldy. We had one car. We had one car. So we were all sitting on top of each other. We had to break down. We had to set up and break down the studio every day.

For a reason that I can't disclose. On disclosed location. It was recorded at an undisclosed location. We can't tell you. We weren't supposed to be there But we were there. Oh like you're sneaking in doing studio work and then This sounds really fucking shady boys Yeah, tell me what I talk about you know Miami mob stuff a million dollars at stake probably. Oh, I'm not exaggerated

What the who the fuck are you? You don't want to talk to you guys for hours, but we should do this again Every time you're in Denver, let's round it up. Yeah, where can people find your band? Kendall Street Company comm at Kendall Street company. That's K E and D a L L S T R E E T C O M P A N Y bitches. Come on now Find them on Instagram. They also have a you porn account you porn comms and handle Street you get a five dollar a month You get all the only James. Yeah, you could see We do I mean we play barefoot Hot if that's your that's me. So you're I don't call it a dress. What does it called that you were a caftan?

I can't I was so we we we have always this this is another thing i've been thinking about it's like we've always played barefoot that was like our thing you know but sometimes i feel like i don't want to be barefoot right now and so i have to deal with this like should i just wear shoes sometimes i wear socks yeah and do that and people go take your shoes off people will yell at us but you know they make those but i don't i want to just sometimes i want to wear shoes wear it i said that about laker jerseys i stopped wearing laker jim i don't want to wanna just, sometimes I wanna wear shoes. Wear it. I said that about Laker jerseys. I stopped wearing Laker jerseys. I'm like, I don't wanna fucking, I'm getting fat.

This is exactly, this is exactly. I'm getting fat, I don't wanna wear a fucking tank top anymore, dude. My arms are getting fat. You should try the calf pants, they're slimming. I gotta do that. Some JJ casuals, you know? Some JJ casuals.

They also have those like, Hulk feet. Have you ever seen those Hulk feet Uggs? Where it's just big feet? Oh yeah. So it's like it looks barefoot. That'd be funny if you got shoes that look like feet. That was what you wore Yeah, I guess so now fuck that you do what the fuck you want. What wear socks you want to wear whatever There's no rules like yeah. Yeah, I hate that about it's so funny when people are like Oh, you got to wear long pants on stage or something. It's me. I'm gonna suck it from the bag It's like fuck that you know what a hundred years ago people like you had to wear a pants on stage or something. It's like, fuck that. You know, 100 years ago, people were like,

you had to wear a tuxedo. And then a tuxedo became a suit with a tie. And then a suit with a tie became a suit without a tie, like the Beatles era. And eventually, you know, it's just like, come on, just wear shorts, be naked, wear a sock like the red hot chili peppers, whatever the fuck you want to do.

Go on stage, make a show happen. Right. Well, keep the dream alive, boys. Oh yeah. And don't let anyone. Well keep the dream alive boys. Oh yeah. And don't let anyone tell you what the fuck to do. And also, keep fucking fixing the van, keep doing everything. Yeah.

Keep it in and out, even though it's gonna hit you, like I sometimes look at my van and I wanna cry. I'm like, just everything breaks down. Yeah. I think about, like, damn, I just spent $200,000 on fucking flights. Like, for the year I'm like, dude, it's fucked up. Being in a band, the more, it's just like,

you think you're cool, you make more money, but then you need a business manager. Then you need to rent a bus. Then you need five hotel rooms, because everyone's a diva. Like, it's, more money, more problems, so tell everyone to suck it. You guys are are doing the thing you're doing the Lord's work Keep doing the Lord's you too, man

Monday motivations have changed my life multiple occasions. Yeah, I'm doing it for you guys I fucking love it, you know, like we're it's hard. Okay, we play a show on Sunday We played five shows you guys doing the same thing We wake up on our first day off and you're in some fucking motel six. I hear you You're like, what the fuck am I doing? Yeah. Yeah, you're doing the Lord's work. Whatever the Lord is important. It's important No, yes. No, yeah culture culture is so important. Yeah, keep finding the good fight. All right guys Kendall Street company Thanks for being on the show and go catch them everyone Modern Jam Band

You've just tuned in to the world saving podcast with Andy Frasco produced by Andy Frasco Joe Angel Howe and Chris Lorenz Please help us save the world by subscribing and rating the show on volume.com, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you're listening so we can spread the word and save the world. Follow us on Instagram at world saving podcasts for updates, for tour dates, merch, and whatever crazy special event Andy thinks of next, check out andyfrasco.com. Special thanks to this week's guest, courtesy of our talent booker, Mara Davis, That's Me, or Andy's other mother.

Be your best and we'll talk to you next week for another great episode of the World Saving Podcast.