Knowing Your Music Business Strengths with Walker & Royce | Elevated Frequencies #41

olivia (00:29.242)
Victory for you guys, your second album with Dirty Bird. What do you feel right now?

Gavin Royce (00:35.224)
I'm a little exhausted, honestly, but it feels good. I can't believe it's almost done. It was talked about for so long, and now that it's over, I'm like, this is kind of insane that it's over already. Sam, how do you feel? I feel tired, but I feel like we've accomplished.

Sam Walker (01:00.844)
I'm really blown away with how everything went. We had several shows sell out and just so happy coming into a lot of places that we've never played before and much bigger rooms that we're used to playing and yeah, just the energy has been amazing. So, and it's nice to see, it would be.

It'd be tough if like, you know, some of the tracks on the album, like if we were, if we were not like playing the tracks on the album, it'd be kind of like tough, but like, like not only have we, you know, we've had like a good tour, but like the tracks in the album are working, which for me, you know, personally, like, you know, like, you know, maybe I've, everyone's like, ah, everything's great. But it's like personally to see the tracks working is very good, you know, cause it.

olivia (01:38.81)
Okay.

Sam Walker (01:47.406)
They don't have to, you know what mean? Like it could be like, you know, falling flat or something like that, but like, no, like they're, they're, they're working. So I'm like, all right, thank goodness. You know, like, yeah, we built this whole tour around it, you know.

Gavin Royce (01:49.816)
Yes. Well that's happened before, haven't it?

olivia (01:57.562)
That's happened before. I'm surprised, but I do understand that that's gotta be nerve wracking to put your body of work in front of a live audience multiple nights in a row. Yeah. So, a lot of people who watch the show are, you know, producers just starting out. And I love that you were just so honest about how exhausted you are because I think a lot of people, you know, they see their heroes, they see the people doing the tours, doing all the things, and they're like, I want that. But...

Gavin Royce (01:59.192)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (02:05.742)
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (02:07.864)
Yes.

olivia (02:26.65)
But what's on the other side of that is the exhaustion, the recuperation. So do you have like self -care routine? What are you doing now to kind of wean yourself off of that high?

Gavin Royce (02:39.064)
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just finding a balance of rest, right? So it's like, you know...

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's like, I think it's important to have, you know, why I'm exhausted. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining in any way. Like we had the best time ever. The tour was amazing. It was probably our best. I think it was probably our best tour we've ever done as far as like doing like a body of like a tour. Like we're like, these are the dates. This is it. I think it was amazing. So it's had a lot of fun. It's just been like a lot of like, you know, I've also had my, I live in Los Angeles and my mom was in LA. So I've been seeing my mom. So I've just, I've just been personally having extra travel that I've had to do.

So, but like my, yes, my, for me personally, I don't know what Sam does, but for me personally, I have like, I need to, just having days at home, multiple days at home where I get into a routine. I feel like that's the biggest thing with the traveling DJ thing is it's hard to stay in a routine. It's hard to stay healthy. It's hard to eat healthy. So when I have the time to do that, I just like kind of just like snap back into like a.

Like I try to go to bed early, I try to get up, you know, this is maybe me just also getting old. I don't party as much as I used to. So, you know, for me it's, I find that if I can get into like a good routine, even if it's just for a few days, it really helps me mentally and it helps me physically as well. You know, get some exercise, I go out on a hike or go to the gym or whatever. As long as I can kind of like come back to this like grounded thing, it does really help me.

Sam Walker (03:49.262)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, like, well, for me, I just, I don't stay super late, you know, so like as soon as the show's over, usually I'm like, you know, I'm out because, you know.

olivia (04:04.794)
you

Gavin Royce (04:09.304)
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not sure Sam has two daughters, so I'm sure his routine hits him right in the face when he comes home.

Sam Walker (04:15.598)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, so I have to, I basically, yeah, I have to reserve my energy for them, for the family and everything too. But at the same time, like they're, like, I don't know, it's, it's, it, there's a whole, like, satisfaction and like contentment that I have, because, you know, I've got this wonderful family, wonderful wife, like, you know, great two daughters and, and, you know, we're sort of like settled down here. So like, that, like,

That has a lot to do, I think, with my ability to just kind of handle a bunch of stuff. I can rely on them as opposed to just kind of being like, all right, what the hell am I doing with my life? So it's really important. But.

Gavin Royce (04:58.776)
I don't have kids so I could just do nothing for three days if I wanted to. But I've learned that that actually doesn't help me when I do do that. It doesn't help me to just be like, oh, maybe I'll have one day of sleeping in, but I try to get back onto the routine to help.

Sam Walker (05:02.03)
Yeah.

olivia (05:07.256)
Right.

olivia (05:16.57)
Yeah, I mean, the more structure that you have in your life, you're kind of forced to get back on track as soon as possible. So I think that's a really good thing, whether it's having a family or just setting those boundaries for yourself. It's super important, but also like giving yourself space to rest because you just accomplished something amazing. That's also really important too. So the balance. And I know, so I know from, you know, research, you guys,

Gavin Royce (05:27.448)
family or just setting those boundaries for yourself. It's super important. But also giving yourself space to rest because you just accomplished something amazing that's also.

Yes.

olivia (05:45.37)
met back in New York, right? This was like what, early 2000s, like 2000 what, like 9, 10, something like that.

Gavin Royce (05:49.24)
Yeah, yeah, we've known each other for a long time. We were both interns at a, there's a distribution company called Studio Distribution, which was like, they did a lot of CDs and a lot of vinyl for record labels back then. This is like pre, I think iTunes was maybe a thing, but it wasn't like the dominant, you know.

Sam Walker (05:53.582)
Oh, we met probably on like 03. Yeah.

olivia (05:55.77)
Oh, three.

Gavin Royce (06:17.016)
streaming wasn't the dominant, digital wasn't the dominant format yet of music. So we were both like interns at this company and they did like Global Underground CDs, K7 Records was what run out of there. It was a cool place to be and you know, classic music was like all these really cool labels and me and Sam were interns in the mail room. And we...

olivia (06:37.882)
No way. You've done a lot of growing up together.

Sam Walker (06:38.062)
Yes.

Gavin Royce (06:42.488)
Yeah, we had to like, we had to just send like, it would be like somebody's doing like, I mean, I don't know how they do this stuff now, but like, like a label like K7 Records or somebody or Global Underground would have a release coming out. And we had to send, we would send, if I remember correctly, Sam, we were doing like the street promo teams would be like, Oh, Chicago is going to do street promo. So we would like, we would send them like posters, a couple of the CDs.

Sam Walker (07:06.35)
We would have to go, like we would go to like all, we would try to go to all the record stores and drop off flyers. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (07:12.12)
Yeah, yeah, if we were in New York, we had to go to record stores and drop off flyers personally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd come with a big stack of like, I'm like, here's all the, yeah, it was like little flyers to promote the releases. Yeah, and we'd go to Tower Records on Times Square and Union Square and stuff like that.

Sam Walker (07:16.11)
and they didn't like us, you know, and there were just tons of flyers there, you know what I mean? Like, they were like, oh, these guys, you know, like, get out of here.

olivia (07:33.37)
So that was like really boots on the ground promoting.

Sam Walker (07:33.518)
Yeah, there was no streaming although it was funny because We were there we were there when right when streaming kind of like murdered the whole thing Like it or downloading illegal downloading Napster was like, you know, just on fire and yeah

Gavin Royce (07:35.572)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, boots on the ground promoting for no money because we were interns.

Gavin Royce (07:45.424)
Right.

Gavin Royce (07:50.648)
We were interns at a distribution company and were never able to get hired because streaming took over and killed the physical music industry while we were there. Yeah, so everybody started moving into like the company studio, I think, you know, somehow went under and a lot of people went to different companies and stuff like that. But we stayed friends. We stayed friends. We were friends with, we had like the same group of friends at that time already. And then,

Sam Walker (08:00.174)
Yeah, like literally as we were there. Yeah. Yeah.

olivia (08:13.402)
Wow. So.

Gavin Royce (08:20.056)
Our manager actually was there as well, so we're still friends with a lot of people we met there, and we stayed friends for years.

Sam Walker (08:27.342)
Yeah, it's like, like, I met our manager there. Yeah, like then like maybe I think oh five or four somewhere in there. Yeah. So yeah, we've known him now 20 years. Wow. That's crazy. It's 20 21 years, man.

Gavin Royce (08:33.24)
Well, he ran the mail room.

Gavin Royce (08:39.064)
Hahaha

olivia (08:42.202)
So what I'm seeing here shake out is like this story of adaptability. So, you know, your industry got killed by streaming and downloading, but somehow you two came together, you know, on the other side of things to actually make the music. So, when did that part come in?

Gavin Royce (08:43.864)
here shake out is like the story of adaptability. So, you know.

Gavin Royce (08:59.544)
The way it goes for me, I think, is me and Sam were friends. Sam was like, Sam had got a job, well you got a job working at Ableton.

Sam Walker (09:10.03)
I was working at Ableton, which had an office right there in like Chelsea.

olivia (09:10.102)
Cool.

Gavin Royce (09:14.264)
But he wasn't doing like the, you were just doing like the sales rep kind of stuff for them, right?

Sam Walker (09:19.424)
Exactly. And like, it was weird because it was kind of like, I don't want to say it was a job I didn't want, but it was like, I had no idea. I was trying to do something totally different. And our manager, Matt, actually, like, he went in for this job. And he's like, actually, Sam should do this job, because I was already doing production stuff. And in the job, I was gonna have to like, probably explain to this different salespeople, like how Ableton works. And so, and I had

you know, a decent understanding of it until I started working there. I was like, oh my God, there's so much I don't know. Right. You know, it's like walking into the manual route. It's just like, holy. Like there's, you I thought I knew how to use this program and there's like, you know, 90 % of it, I don't know what I'm doing. Um, but, uh, yeah, no. So I started working there. And then a couple of years later was just like, I had gotten good enough at production from having to teach everybody else, like how to use the software that I talked to my folks. And I was just like, look, I want to do music full time.

olivia (09:53.914)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (10:16.302)
Let me try to do this. Like I can hold down a job. So you guys, you guys have seen me hold down a job. Now I need your help. Can you like help me, you know, make this music career happen? And then like within nine months or something like that, like I started working with Gav. Yeah.

olivia (10:31.77)
That's so cool.

Gavin Royce (10:31.96)
Was it that? Okay, yeah, and then, well, we had, but it was a few years of like...

I think with studio...

Sam Walker (10:38.158)
No, it's often like 2010 and then we started working together in like 2011 like Springs It was literally like like I think I quit that summer and then in like spring in 2011. We were already working together. Yeah And I was there from like oh late. Oh seven to like mid ten. Yeah, so yeah

Gavin Royce (10:45.816)
Yeah. So you would work there for like four years or something, right?

Right.

olivia (10:54.682)
Wow, so, you know, these days it is, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's just shoots up straight to the top is making music and that's all they're doing is their full -time thing right from the jump unless, you know, their parents, God bless them are supporting their ventures. A lot of people are having to kind of, you know, plug in, put in the work. And when you guys were doing that, that was before social media marketing was even a thing.

But I can't imagine how many lessons you learned literally from the mail room, from working at Ableton, from holding all of these jobs and not really having, because social media is a double -edged sword, not having like necessarily that platform to promote your music yet. So how were you juggling having to get income and then also putting your music project out there?

Gavin Royce (11:25.144)
the mailroom from work can't able to hold them all together.

Gavin Royce (11:34.392)
that platform to promote your music yet. So how are you?

get income and then also putting the music track. Well, I didn't, I mean, just to say like, I didn't have any help. So what had happened with me, my side of it was that honestly I had worked for a record label before I moved to New York. I had worked for this record label called Yoshi Toshi, which is still around and was at the time when I worked there owned by Deep Dish, which is Sharam and Dubfire.

And I was like, they didn't really hire me. So I was like, when we moved and moved to New York and I was like, I'm just going to move to New York for a year and work at this company and see what happens. And then once that didn't, once the studio distribution, I had the reason I didn't go back into music industry. I was like, I'm never working in music industry again. I was like, screw this. Like there's, this is no help, but I was a DJ and what ended up happening for me is I was working in like TV production stuff. I was like, uh, like, uh, like, uh,

and a camera assistant on all these reality shows for MTV in New York. But I was DJing on the side and it just started really kind of happening for me. And like...

olivia (12:32.538)
Really?

Gavin Royce (12:41.08)
for me the DJing, I think this is how I ended up with Sam. Sam was my friend and we were still friends, but he was kind of doing just music production where I started becoming like, I was DJing in New York. I started DJing, I was DJing like five to six nights a week and I was DJing everything from like cool disco parties to like electro blog house parties to open format like 90s hip hop parties. And I was just like a DJ DJ. And I feel like that's where I kind of cut my teeth. And I definitely was working a lot. And what I think,

happened is we both, people were asking me to do remixes. So Sam had actually got, given me a copy of like Ableton three or something. And I was trying to do like my own remixes and I really sucked at it.

and I was really bad. I was doing like disco edits, which I was like good at, but then I couldn't do like any production. So I had like some remix that somebody had asked me to do. And I came to Sam and I was like, will you help me with this? And Sam's like, that's how Walker and Royce is born. It was like Sam in like five minutes was like, oh, you mean this? And I was like, I hate you. Let's work together.

Sam Walker (13:44.204)
I'm

olivia (13:46.37)
Well, I love that. That just goes to show you have really complimentary skill sets, which is so important in any duo. Of course, there's going to be overlapping, but to be able to complement each other's strengths, that's huge. That definitely shows even to fans who are Luddites like me who know nothing about music technology, even I can see that.

Gavin Royce (13:53.706)
Yes.

Gavin Royce (14:00.44)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (14:11.424)
Right.

Sam Walker (14:12.206)
Yeah, well, and you know what Gav was saying, I had like no contacts, right? Like I didn't know anybody because it's like, that's, I mean, like you're saying, like the complimentary aspect of it is like a lot of studio time. It's just like, you know, I'm down here in the basement, like just like I'm not interacting with anybody and it takes a long time to drill down with stuff, but like you need to be talking to people and sharing your music and you know, understanding like what labels and you know, who's important and all this kind of stuff. No concept of that.

Gavin Royce (14:36.736)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (14:42.062)
And so, yeah, Gavin knows everybody. Yeah, exactly. I was just like.

Gavin Royce (14:42.232)
And for me, I was DJing six nights a week, so I was out all the time and that's the one thing I didn't know, I knew everybody. I was like, oh, I was at this party, I was like, I was just like a DJ, like a New York local DJ that was playing everywhere. I knew where all the parties were, I knew what promoters were, I never had to pay for parties or anything. I was being booked at a bunch of parties and I would hang out at a bunch of places. That's how I started getting, that's how people were like, oh, I like your DJ sets, you should do a remix for my label or for my track or something. And I'd be like, okay, yeah, I could do that.

olivia (14:45.754)
Right.

Sam Walker (15:10.126)
I'm

Gavin Royce (15:10.232)
I didn't know how to do that.

olivia (15:12.506)
That's amazing. I don't know if you consider yourself an introvert, Sam. I am. Every introvert needs their extrovert, right? Like...

Sam Walker (15:18.092)
100 % Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's funny, because I don't think I'm like hard coded introvert. Like, I think it's more because this is my job. I've, I have to be like, it's like, I almost have to like, lock down like, yeah, because I was doing sales. Like, so if I didn't have anything, if there was no creative pursuit at all, then I could be a lot more like, like, like,

Gavin Royce (15:21.048)
Sam? Yes, yeah.

Sam Walker (15:45.736)
Salesy or not salesy I should say like it let more extraverted just like you know more talkative because it wouldn't it's like my brain is always like No, you should be doing this other thing, but this other thing is way more important You got to get you have to go finish those tracks if I never had to do that then But I do right so that's yeah. Yeah, absolutely

olivia (15:48.122)
and give it a try, for sure.

olivia (15:58.618)
Mm.

olivia (16:03.578)
So, do you think, because I think a lot of artists, a lot of producers are introverted, do you think you can make it today being introverted or do you have to go out and do you have to shake hands and kiss babies and...

Gavin Royce (16:04.952)
So do you think, because I think a lot of artists, a lot of producers are introverted, do you think you can make it today, being introverted, or do you have to go out and do you have to shake hands with this baby?

Sam Walker (16:17.422)
It's like if I if I was by myself and I hadn't met gav Nothing would have worked out but I would have had to at least find somebody like to do that Like I would have had to you know If not gav then it would have been like some Manager or something like that to then to be like Sam you need to do this this this You need to be pushed in this direction I need to you know, you need to be writing these tracks and I know these people these labels and stuff like that You know like so yeah

Gavin Royce (16:43.768)
I mean, I would argue that like, I would almost like, not argue, I would state that I almost like maybe thought at first that I would help Sam. I thought like Sam's such a talented producer, maybe I can just help him and like help manage him. And then I kind of realized like I feel like I needed to be in, A, I feel like, yes, there's like very much a yin and yang between us and.

Initially when we first started making music together, some of our first songs just hit with everybody and it was just like an immediate kind of reaction of people liking it. So I kind of felt like I knew we had this like dynamic that I didn't want to break up. But initially I kind of thought, oh, maybe I'll just like help Sam manage jam and I'll just be a behind the scenes guy. But I kind of feel like.

Sam Walker (17:28.846)
No, I mean, it's really important because, you know, like, I feel like I can probably work longer and harder in the studio because Gav is like a bit more of the face man and he can go like be, you know, like rubbing elbows at like 5 a .m. or something like that, like, you know, super late night. And like, you know, when he goes home, he doesn't have like then the same like, you know, the same. All right. Now you got to like, you know, sit here and.

Gavin Royce (17:46.604)
He used to do that. I don't do that as much anymore.

olivia (17:48.152)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (17:58.318)
Fuck with this, like, wave form for like five hours until it sounds right. You know, like that kind of thing. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (18:02.232)
Right, right. But I mean, but as far as people making it, you know, I don't, I think, you know, there's always a lot of people ask a lot of advice, like how to, how to, how to make it, how to do this. And it's like, I think one thing that people don't really know, like, you know, for us, we're having a lot of success right now and it took us a long time to get here. And it's like, we, we, we actually like failed a lot. I was trying to tell people, it's like, you gotta be willing to fail. So.

olivia (18:04.25)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (18:28.664)
Can an introvert make it? Yeah, absolutely, especially if the music's good enough. The music always has to be good. I feel like people sometimes don't realize that if the music isn't good, marketing's only getting to get you so far. So I feel like the music is more important. I almost feel like if music is good, it will always find a way.

Sam Walker (18:33.326)
Right.

Sam Walker (18:46.126)
But but my output would not be anything close to what it is without Gavin constantly like like being in part of the process. Yes. Yeah Yeah

Gavin Royce (18:52.696)
I will. Well, yeah, I mean, I feel like we have a dynamic where we feed off each other. Like I said, I feel like I probably knew more about Ableton before I worked with Sam than I do now, because I just don't want to break up the way we do things. Sam doesn't want me mixing down any records. He's one of the best mix engineers around. He doesn't want me to... I'm like, yeah, let me take a stab at it. It'll drive him crazy. He doesn't even want me to touch the computer. So we kind of take that dynamic and...

olivia (19:09.304)
Thank you.

Gavin Royce (19:21.4)
But yeah, but as far as like for people wondering how to get to where we are, it's like we actually, I mean, what I consider failed a lot, if that makes sense. And we just put ourselves out there. You know, it's like one thing I think people, you know, try to, some people are so careful about what they want to put out sometimes that they never put out anything and they never give a shot. And a lot of us, it's like, it's like, just like us, you know, we've been told no more than we've been told yes, you know.

olivia (19:30.072)
Mm.

Gavin Royce (19:48.632)
So if that's like, I feel like that doesn't really kind of translate to some people. I think some people are like, all right, I'm gonna do a remix and I got an agent and I got an agent's assistant and I have a, you know, I have a manager and I have a stylist and you're right, but you have one track and it's like, everyone's kind of thinking about this like business plan before they have the real, you know, you need to have the good content. And it.

olivia (20:06.584)
Right.

olivia (20:10.906)
Yeah, the core competency. And it is, you're talking about, you know, getting those no's and then getting your yeses. It is like sales. You have to be excited about getting the no's because it means you're closer to a yes. And a lot of people are afraid and they're discouraged by hearing no. And it's just a part of like character building and resilience, but it's important to hear it from, you know, people like yourselves that you had to go through those struggles too.

Gavin Royce (20:18.456)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (20:26.616)
and they're discouraged by hearing now. Yeah. And it's just a part of...

Gavin Royce (20:38.104)
that you had to go through those struggles too. Right.

olivia (20:40.346)
because it also helps, it also makes the successes 10 times better. How, you know what I mean?

Gavin Royce (20:44.376)
Right, I mean, we've already said we've known each other almost 20 years or has it now been 20 years? It's been 20 years we've known each other. You know, and this is where we've gotten here now after like 20 years. I mean, we've been working together since I think 2011 we started making music together. I don't think people realize that sometimes. I think that people think that we kind of came out of nowhere, especially when we did our first Dirty Bird album. I think people thought we were just like these brand new guys. And I'm like, no, man, I've been, you know, I was working at Yoshi Toki Toshi Records like when I was like 18 as an intern in college, you know, it's like.

Sam Walker (20:50.234)
Yeah, like literally, yeah.

Gavin Royce (21:14.232)
We've been, we've, we've, I guess maybe is it called failing upwards? I don't know. It's like, you know, but.

Sam Walker (21:19.918)
I There's yeah, there's there's something you said for just the tenacity I mean like, you know, we we yeah, it was we were five years in by the time Barclay Crenshaw like noticed us right or and or you know Maybe and maybe four and a half years in when Justin Martin noticed us It was like, you know, it took you know, and and just you know, that's a long time when you're writing You know, that's months and months and months of writing stuff and you know, you don't know where your money's coming from, you know

Gavin Royce (21:30.548)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (21:36.19)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (21:42.324)
I

Sam Walker (21:46.062)
God bless my folks for like helping out and stuff like that, but I also you know, I was married, you know, so

Gavin Royce (21:49.784)
I was homeless at one point and we had a studio in Brooklyn. I was homeless. I had friends that I would sleep on their couches. So I was technically homeless. But I remember one time Sam went on vacation. You went out of town for like two weeks or something and you were like, under no circumstances can you sleep in the studio? And I did the whole time he was gone. And I never told him. And I was like going to my friend's house to shower. Cause I was like, all right, I'm gonna give my friends a break for me sleeping. Cause I had like a year where I was just like not making enough money because we were really, we just.

But that's what I was trying to say is like, I'm not saying that everyone has to go homeless to get where we are, but like.

Sam Walker (22:19.918)
Oh, you mean like the, the, the, the... Oh, you mean like the rental, the rental over in like Bushwick? Oh, okay. No, no, no, I remember this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gavin Royce (22:28.118)
Yeah.

olivia (22:28.994)
Wait.

Okay, I was gonna say, I hope this isn't the first time that you've heard this.

Gavin Royce (22:31.448)
You were like, you can't sleep there. I think he's heard this.

Sam Walker (22:35.502)
No, no, no, it sounds familiar. I'm like, how did Will let you in the apartment? We're like, no, no, no, no, no. You mean like the New York Studio Factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (22:39.832)
No, no, no, no, no, no. It was when we had the rental and they were like, under no circumstances can anyone sleep in here. And I was like, okay. But then I was just like, I slept in there for like a week and a half.

Sam Walker (22:47.726)
No, I was worried that like, yeah, like.

I was worried that we would get kicked out of the room, but yeah, we eventually, those guys were jerks anyway, so.

Gavin Royce (22:53.528)
Yeah.

olivia (22:54.616)
Oh my.

That's a great story. And it just goes to show that everybody's journey is different and you cannot compare yourself.

Gavin Royce (23:03.512)
Yes. Well, that's the other thing I wanted to say is like, I feel like also people look for success in what, when they ask for advice. We just, we've been getting asked this a lot recently, especially since for this album, people, this question keeps coming up and it's like, I think people are looking for this blueprint to follow, you know, this, they want to like a, like a, like a schematics, like they're building a house and they can build the same house. It's, it's just like, it's always going to be different. And it's, it's,

you know, you, a lot of it is just sticking it out. You know what I mean? If, if your favorite label doesn't want anything to do with you, there's going to be another label that might, you know, so it's like, you haven't, you know, but it's like things you have to learn. It's like, a lot of people will say, Hey, I wrote this music for this label. And then they didn't want it. But then there's some other label might want it. And that might blow up on that label. You know, you got to just stick it out and you got to like, put yourself out there and like not get discouraged. And yeah, there's no blueprint. There's no like,

you know, formula to do this, if that makes sense.

Sam Walker (24:02.798)
I think also people might think that it's easy to write music. Like it's very fast. It's not fast. It takes like hours. Like it just takes like a long time. And like a lot of it is, I don't know, knowing like once you've written like once you've written some tracks that are successful, like first of all, a lot, you know, almost every single track that we've ever done sick to death of at the end of it.

Gavin Royce (24:06.744)
Yeah. People do think that. Yeah.

Sam Walker (24:31.054)
I think it's a piece of crap at the end of it. It doesn't matter, right? Like it doesn't matter if it's rave grave or whatever. He says, no, just like, I don't know if this is going to be like, you know, people are going to hate this, you know, that kind of thing. And then after having that happen a bunch, there is a part of your brain which starts to understand like the difference between like, you're like, okay, now I can sort of hear that this is going to work, even though that I don't like it anymore. Like, like it takes a long time for that to come up, right? Like.

olivia (24:31.13)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (24:57.752)
But you'll start to hate it and then once it starts to work in the club then you'll be like, okay, what we did was right. And then you'll start to love it again.

Sam Walker (25:01.582)
I don't hate it anymore. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

olivia (25:03.642)
Listen, I have been on camera in some capacity my entire professional career and I can't even look at myself. You know what I mean? I have an editor edit all my clips and I'm please, I cannot listen to myself talk. I can't listen to my own voice anymore. So I get it. And I can imagine when you're putting out an album, that really is amplified because you're putting together a body of work that...

Gavin Royce (25:12.44)
Right.

Sam Walker (25:13.326)
Right.

Gavin Royce (25:16.76)
So, right. Yeah, just don't let me know.

Gavin Royce (25:29.208)
Yes.

olivia (25:30.17)
flows together in some certain way. And when you're so close to it and you're digging into the details day in and day out, it's probably confusing. You're like, wait a second, like I need to take a step back for a minute because this is too much.

Gavin Royce (25:33.688)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (25:42.446)
some of these tracks, like the drum and bass tracks, we started in like 2020, right? Because the album was supposed to, like we were supposed to, we were working on an album too, like pre -COVID or like, you know, during 2020, we were like, okay, we're starting to lay the groundwork here. And then COVID just derailed everything. But in that summer, I think, we started with some drum and bass tracks and now two of them are on the album, like three and a half, four years later. So,

Gavin Royce (25:46.53)
Yeah.

olivia (25:47.034)
Wow.

Gavin Royce (25:49.368)
Because we didn't know what the hell we were doing in 2020.

Gavin Royce (26:07.288)
Yeah.

Sam Walker (26:11.278)
Yeah, like literally it you know, it's like you have if you start something it's like a cool idea Sometimes you don't like and that's another thing comes from experience. Sometimes I start a cool idea But I know that I'm not ready to really arrange it like I will sort of put it aside because I don't want to corrupt it like sometimes if you you take a cool idea and you can you can smash it yeah by by Trying to go too far with it too soon. I'm like, okay Like I think this is a good idea. Let me come back to it. I

Gavin Royce (26:29.72)
if you force it too much.

Sam Walker (26:40.43)
like randomly, I'm sure at some point I'll be digging through my projects and I'll find this one or be like, wow, I can't believe I didn't finish this one. But it's like, okay, now you can maybe arrange it. Yeah.

olivia (26:51.066)
Yeah, that's really cool. I love that that also speaks to the timelessness of great electronic music because you can go back to a project that you created four years ago and make it relevant and fresh and something that people will love forever. And I mean, that's just so evident with, you know, a lot of a lot of your tracks, even the ones that you're sick of. I mean, you know, they can be played today and five years from now and it'll still be fresh and exciting.

Gavin Royce (27:19.608)
Yeah.

olivia (27:20.142)
when people hear it at the club.

Sam Walker (27:22.126)
We hope, we'll see. We'll see what's going on in 2029. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (27:26.488)
I don't want to think, I know I don't want to think about that, that sounds so far away from my head but it's not.

olivia (27:26.554)
It's 2029. God, it's closer than we think.

Sam Walker (27:32.43)
That's that that 20, not 2029 is just as far away as 2019, right? Isn't that insane? Like, yes, right.

Gavin Royce (27:36.6)
Hahaha

olivia (27:37.626)
is no way. That's crazy. Well, we did like, I know, well, no, it's, it is, it is a mind fuck, but it's so, it's also exciting because it's like, when you're on this, you know, creative journey, you are literally creating opportunities for yourself. You're creating your future. And that's something that's so different. I mean, nothing against people who work, you know, one job, nine to five, like, and there's like a clear path of,

Gavin Royce (27:43.48)
Trying to keep it upbeat here, Sam.

Sam Walker (27:45.262)
Thank you.

olivia (28:06.978)
upward mobility. I mean, there's so, there's, you just release your sophomore album. Like there's so much more to create. So that has to energize you a little bit.

Gavin Royce (28:09.272)
you just release your sophomore album. There's so much.

Sam Walker (28:17.646)
Yeah, I mean, you know.

Gavin Royce (28:17.72)
Yeah, I mean, I'm ready to, you know, we just finished one of the greatest things about doing the, we're doing this album in parts. One of the best things about being able to do it in parts is we've been able to like kind of continuously work on it. Like, and I'm kind of me personally, I'm feeling I'm like almost ready to like get it behind us and like get working on some next music. So it's like, it's definitely kind of motivated me a little bit. I feel like, um,

going in at the beginning of last year, we kind of didn't really know what to do musically. And then we kind of feel like something kind of hit. And that's why we decided to do the album. And now I feel like that. I mean, I don't know how Sam feels, but I'm kind of feeling like that creative energy is like still like, I'm ready to keep going, nailing it down.

Sam Walker (28:58.734)
Well, that was the problem with COVID, right? That COVID kind of messed up the creative direction. Like it didn't really, I mean, all things, you know, in full disclosure, I could already start to feel that in 2019, but then COVID really twisted it up, right? Like 2019, I was starting to feel like, okay, this is starting to get stale in a certain way. I have to figure out where to go next. And then COVID happened and then it just like, and then like,

it like the music industry kind of froze. Like, obviously, there was some stuff that came out in 2020 and 2021. But everything very much slowed down. And we were basically playing the same tracks in 2021. Like, and people were raging to them. Like we didn't we didn't feel like we had to move on. But then 2022, it was like, everything's better. Like, it's like we all caught up to where it would have been if COVID never happened. And then we were like, Okay, now we really need to move on from from all that stuff.

And I mean, we still play, you know, a bunch of our tracks. But, you know, things have gotten much faster and there's a lot of techno now. And there's like a lot of, you know, we're playing drum and bass on our set. Like it's not, these are not just album tracks. We're actually playing these tracks in our set. I don't know if it would have been unthinkable, but it's more like we probably wouldn't have, it wouldn't have had the same, we wouldn't be deploying them in the same way. Like it would be more of a novelty versus like, Oh no, people actually like, we might even just start playing drum and bass on our set occasionally.

Gavin Royce (30:07.896)
Yeah.

olivia (30:12.41)
Right.

Sam Walker (30:27.31)
Right, it's just because there's a lot of cool drum and bass out there. Yeah. Yeah, like instead of it just being sort of like a novelty, like, oh, yeah, we'll throw a drum and bass and track in here. Oh, cool. OK, now move back to the house. It's like now I'll play 20 minutes. Now we play half an hour of drum and bass or something like that. People are if people are into it, you know. So.

Gavin Royce (30:28.792)
Yeah, I started downloading a bunch of drum and bass tracks.

Gavin Royce (30:40.696)
Yeah. Yeah.

olivia (30:44.762)
Yeah. Well, I can say anecdotal, like anecdotally, all of the shows that I've been to, your shows, I mean, I've gotten a different set every time. And there's some other artists, and this is not like a dig where I've gone and I've seen very similar sets because they have a very, it's like in their branding, like this is how they do things. This is, you know, that's their structure. But with your sets, it is always something fresh and new.

Gavin Royce (30:46.424)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (31:04.92)
They do things.

Gavin Royce (31:09.56)
your set, it is always something fresh. Yeah, well, I think everybody, you know, we have a few routines, we definitely have a few things where we're like, we know we're gonna play some tracks, but we always try to present it in a different way. We definitely never plan anything. I feel like we maybe have planned one set that we needed to or something, but I feel like...

Sam Walker (31:31.342)
The shorter the set is, the more we need to plan it. It's a confessible set.

Gavin Royce (31:33.752)
Right, yeah. I feel like we played like 45 minutes somewhere and we were like, all right, what are we gonna play? Because it's like, we don't wanna like, there's no time to experiment, but definitely we try to give it something different. There's definitely some songs where I'm like, this song sounds perfect out of this song, so I might do it a few times, but it might be at different times of the set.

olivia (31:33.818)
Mm, right.

Sam Walker (31:43.214)
Right. Yeah.

olivia (31:56.418)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (31:56.568)
I think for the tour we opened up all the shows with Let's Live It Up, it just felt right. But now that the tour's over, we're probably not gonna open our songs, our sets with Let's Live It Up anymore. We'll try to change it, because we were like, okay, if I was the lead song of the album, this album tour, we felt like that was the right thing to do for the album. So every set for the last couple months we've done that. But now it's like, okay, let's just figure out a new opener. We'll still play that song, but maybe we'll play it near the end of the set. So.

Sam Walker (32:03.502)
Yes, yeah, I was gonna say we'll probably start to change things up now.

olivia (32:24.122)
Right, right. So what can you say about now that the like official tour for the first part of the album is over? How do you go about planning? I mean, obviously you check in with your team, got to see what there's demand for, what festivals are coming up. I mean, that's coming up so soon, which is fucking crazy that like we're at that point. So.

Gavin Royce (32:33.528)
obviously check in with your team.

Gavin Royce (32:43.16)
I think March 1st is like a festival season official because it's like I feel like Cross Festival happens in San Diego and now it's like okay now it's just now everyone's playing festivals from Allen, right?

olivia (32:49.474)
Yeah.

olivia (32:52.858)
Yeah. Yeah. So is that kind of your game plan or what's the next step?

Gavin Royce (32:58.104)
Yeah, we have I mean I got a look at our schedule we got we have some cool festivals that we're doing this summer I don't think we can I don't think they've officially announced yet. So we won't say what they are yet We've got it We're doing beyond in a couple weeks We're going to we're going to winter music. We're going to Miami for winter music conference For like our own RDA party. We have another big RDA party coming We're doing in Austin, which isn't like a festival, but it's like the concourse project. It's like it's as big as a

Sam Walker (33:08.526)
But we're doing Beyond in two weeks.

I certainly think that's been announced, I hope.

olivia (33:14.68)
Yeah.

olivia (33:26.714)
Right. Yep.

Gavin Royce (33:27.928)
stage. So I feel like, you know, we have a yeah, it's such a cool club. It's like this warehouse in the middle of nowhere. And then

Sam Walker (33:28.068)
Yeah, I love that place. Yeah. Exactly, it's like always slamming. I love that place.

olivia (33:32.538)
It is.

Gavin Royce (33:37.846)
You're like, are we going to be at a farm soon? No, no, there's a warehouse right here. We got some other stuff we're doing. Australia is coming up soon too.

Sam Walker (33:40.782)
Yeah, and there's like, there's like, thousands of people there and you're like, what? Yeah.

olivia (33:47.906)
Oh wow.

Gavin Royce (33:54.712)
Where else are we going, Sam?

Sam Walker (33:59.512)
I mean, you know what we should do is like, like, you know, sidebar gab, we should probably have like, Matt, or you know, this is our manager, we should probably have our manager say like, what we can talk about and what we can't on things like this. Because I'm like, I'm like, I don't know. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (34:00.216)
It's come. Yeah.

Gavin Royce (34:08.696)
I don't know what he said.

olivia (34:10.01)
Well...

I know. And I didn't mean to throw you for a loop. I just always find it interesting after you have like a planned like branded tour like that. Like it's a mindset shift, you know, it's like going into festival season and now you don't have to have the same like structure like you were talking about with opening with the same track. So it's just gonna be different. And...

Gavin Royce (34:22.136)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (34:32.696)
Yeah, and I guess you were asking how we felt now and I was saying I was feeling exhausted. I also feel like I've only been thinking about this tour. So now I almost feel like this, I feel like just this week, this dust is settling and I'm like, okay, now what? So I think we're asking ourselves the same question. We're like, okay, what's the next move? We're excited to start some, play some festivals again. I think it's fun. It's been nice to play these. The tour's been such a great, it's been really such a great tour. We had like, you know,

olivia (34:40.794)
Uh huh.

Sam Walker (34:40.878)
Yeah.

olivia (34:46.874)
Right.

Gavin Royce (35:00.856)
It'll do, I love playing these small clubs, like it'll do, not small, but like they're really fun, but then also like cool warehouses. So it's been, it's just been such a good mix, but yeah, I'm excited to play. I'm excited to play beyond wonderland. I've even played a festival stage like that in months. So I feel like it's gonna be cool to play outside again.

olivia (35:18.426)
Definitely.

Sam Walker (35:19.31)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's right. It's been it's been a while since we've done a festival.

Gavin Royce (35:21.432)
I'm excited to write some more, maybe some more music to play this summer. That's what I think. I think we have a couple things that we're like excited to get to get that into our sets. Like, you know, maybe one of those will become our next opener for the summer. Yeah, we got some really cool vocalists into the studio recently, so we're excited to work on some new stuff.

Sam Walker (35:32.27)
We did a bunch of sessions, like in the meantime, that'll be, you know, again, we have to sort of now start to drill down on those projects and finish those. Yeah.

olivia (35:43.166)
Well, it's really exciting and I'm so grateful that you took time out of this very busy schedule to chat with me. It's such a privilege for artists who listen to this show to be able to hear just real raw, authentic stories from the people they look up to. It's important conversations to have.

Gavin Royce (36:01.206)
Yeah.

Gavin Royce (36:04.568)
Of course, yeah, and just yeah, don't give up guys. Don't get mad if things don't go your way all the time because eventually they'll just, that's what I feel like happened with us is we had a whole long time of things not going our way and we almost quit. And I wanna say we were talking about this Claude von Strohk, I wanna tell this very funny story about Claude von Strohk because we played the first Dirty Bird Campout and.

Sam Walker (36:06.286)
Cheers, yeah.

Sam Walker (36:20.876)
Yes.

Gavin Royce (36:29.56)
We were like, oh wow. And I found out later that we were on cats and dogs label and that's why he booked us. We were American and he didn't have to pay an international flight. So we didn't really know why he booked us. Cause we weren't anything a dirty bird. And for the longest time, Claude Von Stroke would always be like, you should have been at the first one, man. And I'm like, we weren't the first one. Like he always forgot that we were at the first one. He's like, you guys should have been at the first camp out. And I'm like, we weren't the first camp out. We played nude on Saturday. We played the first set on Saturday.

Sam Walker (36:37.582)
you

olivia (36:41.274)
Wow.

olivia (36:54.318)
That's awesome.

Sam Walker (36:56.206)
And then.

Gavin Royce (36:58.322)
And the first camp out it was like noon and Christian Martin was eating breakfast Indian style in the dance floor

Sam Walker (37:03.886)
But also he's like, oh, you got to send me this track. We've done this remix. It was sort of a big remix for us. He's like, yeah, but send this to me. I've never heard it. I was like, you were in the booth when we played it. That's your camp out.

olivia (37:05.088)
Oh.

Gavin Royce (37:09.344)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had this song, Bright Lights, that we had remixed and we had given it to Justin Martin and a couple weeks after the camp out, I had given it to Justin Martin to play and then we got an email on the Monday after this weekend that, and it was from Eats Everything. One email was from Eats Everything and one was from Claude Von Stroke and they're asking about this remix and they're like, Justin wouldn't give it to us. And...

olivia (37:14.618)
Oh my god.

Sam Walker (37:39.31)
Thank you.

Gavin Royce (37:40.184)
And it was funny because Barclay is like, hi, I'm Claude Von Stroke. I'm not sure if you know me. And I'm like, we just, we were, we, we two weeks ago were standing in your, standing together at a DJ booth at your festival. But he's like, I'm not sure if you know me. That's why I think it's funny. He's always like, you should have been at the first one.

Sam Walker (37:44.846)
Right, yeah.

olivia (37:45.056)
Yeah, no, no fucking idea who you are.

Sam Walker (37:52.174)
Yeah, right.

olivia (37:56.602)
That's so funny. That is so funny. God, I told myself I wouldn't do this, but you gave me an opening. So, you know, you were saying that Justin wouldn't give him that track. I'm very upset about a track that I tried to Shazam at your set 50 times. And I don't know whose it is. All you have to tell me is, is it yours or not? It was a remix with...

Gavin Royce (38:03.988)
Okay.

Gavin Royce (38:08.728)
and give him that.

Sam Walker (38:13.906)
the

Gavin Royce (38:16.024)
Okay?

Gavin Royce (38:21.93)
Okay.

olivia (38:26.042)
Was it not Annie Lennox? The talk to me like lovers do. Is that yours? That one.

Sam Walker (38:29.42)
Oh yeah. No. Yeah, that's...

Gavin Royce (38:31.352)
Talk to me. That is, I will say who it is. It's AC Slater in A track. And I think that, yeah, which is like such a crazy, that's like probably one of our favorite songs to play right now. And the story, from what I understand, I don't know if I'm doing bad gossip here and I shouldn't say this, but like I had gotten a text like last summer from like,

olivia (38:39.906)
You can see Slater in A -Track! Wow!

Sam Walker (38:47.77)
Oh my god, that's so good. Yeah.

olivia (38:49.306)
I washed my shit.

Gavin Royce (39:01.508)
Chris Lake was like, I saw him at a festival and he was like, AC Slater just made the track of the year. And he was like, he's gonna come out on Black Book and that was like last summer. And then I never heard anything of, and I was like, and I remember a few months later being like, what the hell was he talking about? I never knew what he was talking about. Then we got a promo of it and I think that they just couldn't clear, is that Annie Lennox? It's like, or is it like, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say yeah, it was officially the RhythmiX. Yeah. And.

olivia (39:07.742)
Yeah, no shit.

Sam Walker (39:20.482)
Yeah, Eurythmics, yeah. Here comes the rain again, yeah.

Gavin Royce (39:30.424)
They couldn't, I think they just couldn't clear the sample. And I think they were trying to put on Black Book. And so we just got it. So I don't know what the plan is with it now. We got it on a promo and I've been playing it. We've been playing it every single set since. I haven't heard anyone else play it. So maybe people are sleeping on it. It's such a good track. It's such a good, it is such a fun track to play. It goes off every time. It's so unexpected. And it's like, it's like our favorite track right now. I wish we wrote that track.

olivia (39:33.838)
Ah. Oh my God. That was hot gas. Thank you.

Sam Walker (39:35.398)
Thank you.

Sam Walker (39:42.286)
you

olivia (39:55.062)
Yeah, like I'm yeah, right. I and I thought you did. I'm literally like an addict. I recorded on my you know, just on my videos because it wouldn't Shazam and I'm like listening to the 30 seconds I got and it's so I mean really you're set you're set in Chicago, you know back in January was so much fun. Thank you guys for everything you do for the fans and thank you for this interview. It's really been a pleasure.

Gavin Royce (40:08.152)
Hahaha.

Gavin Royce (40:15.448)
Thank you. Thank you, Olivia. Yeah, that's been great. Thank you, everybody, and yeah. See you soon. And that was the best, that was the best Chicago show ever. That was such a great show.

Sam Walker (40:18.846)
Okay, awesome. Thank you.

olivia (40:23.77)
Thanks.

olivia (40:27.706)
I stayed, I have this thing, I don't stay till the end of shows. I've done it like three times in the past five years and that was one of them. Because I had to hear every single, I was so excited. I was telling Sam the last show that I saw was Spy Bar before ARC. And so I was like, it's been a minute. So I got to hear every single track.

Gavin Royce (40:34.794)
Okay, great.

Oh, thank you.

Gavin Royce (40:42.808)
Oh wow, okay. Okay. All right, well we have some Chicago plans that we're announcing very soon. So, we'll stay tuned, yeah. We'll let you know.