Kristina Stubblefield: [00:00:00] Thank you for tuning in to The Ring The Bling And All The Things. Mike, we are missing a familiar face today.
Michael Gaddie: We are
Kristina Stubblefield: for this episode, but we have somebody that's been on our podcast before. Is he considered a local celebrity?
Michael Gaddie: Of course he is.
Kristina Stubblefield: Is he? Okay. I didn't know if I wanted to word it that way, but we have Max Maxwell joining us. Some people know you as the Crashers, some people know you from SystemMax.
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Kristina Stubblefield: Cake take.
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Michael Gaddie: Cake take. I love it.
Kristina Stubblefield: Moving in with the Maxwells.
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Kristina Stubblefield: You have a whole list of things, but I think you're really going to just join us and talk with your expertise and your experience. How long have you been in the entertainment world?
Max Maxwell: I've been a musician say for this year will be 49 years. Cause I've been playing music [00:01:00] since I was 10 years old.
Kristina Stubblefield: 49 years!
Max Maxwell: I'll be 59.
Michael Gaddie: I thought you were like 20 something.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, it's all my mom and dad, but my dad was in the entertainment business and so my brother and myself both got that from him, which was an awesome, something to get handed over.
And then I have spent a lot of my life working in, in and out of music stores, and that's sort of the music business and meeting musicians and being involved in playing everything from a little bar job to somebody's small birthday party and then to, I played in front of 20,000 people before, so it's been a real wide range and I've been fortunate to travel all over the place, Europe and Japan, and all over the United States.
So I've seen a lot of crazy things, and been involved in a lot of different pieces of the entertainment business from [00:02:00] being a musician in a band, booking the band, being in a band of backed up big music, you know, big famous people. And seeing that side of it. And then being more of a person who's now creating things on the wedding side of it and working with brides and groom and their families to grow that piece of it.
But I also worked in the recording industry for a long while and worked in recording studios in Los Angeles, in New York, and Nashville. We all the big markets and a lot of other places. So I've seen it every way and a lot of different things in the entertainment business.
Kristina Stubblefield: Mike, I think we need to get up, and let Max do this one on his own. I think we're out of our league here, .
Max Maxwell: Not at all. Not at all. Well, it's always a blessing to be involved in this business, particularly the wedding industry, because just like with anything else, it's just a, this great group of people that are connected.
Michael Gaddie: That's what I wanted to ask you. Do you feel like your business is going more [00:03:00] towards weddings now, or do you still do more corporate or is it 50 50?
Max Maxwell: Well, it's interesting, there's three pieces to the business, the Crashers, and it's part of it is weddings, part of it's corporate events, in private events. And then, the other piece of it is our public side where we play in front of, you know, uh, festivals and fairs and outdoor things and indoor things.
So it's broken into thirds, and the funny thing is the, really the wedding takes up about 30% of our jobs- 40% of our jobs. Then, the public is about 30%, and then the rest is corporate. So it's evenly balanced though. We're focusing more on going towards the corporate with the Crashers, because the weddings are the things we love playing the most. It, really is gratifying, as an entertainer to be part of somebody's life, a piece of it that it, for me is the most important piece of the thing because in regards to their wedding day, what [00:04:00] I always say is that they may not remember a few things during that day.
You may not remember what your wedding dress look like, or they may not remember exactly what the food tastes like, but they always remember whether they had a great time. And typically the entertainment piece of it is that part of it. I had a great time because of the entertainment was that was there.
That's a lot of it. And so I think it's a real important piece of that and that's one of the reasons why we love being a part of it. It's something that they remember. Like we have been together for 15 years, and so we have people that first year that we played their wedding that go come back to us and we see them out at a festival or something we're playing in.
They're just like, Hey, you play our wedding. And people are still calling me, telling me it was the greatest time they ever had.
Michael Gaddie: I know we recently did a bridal show and you all came in and closed it out and did your performance, and I know those couples that were there, they stuck. They were dancing, they were clapping, you really got them involved.
Kristina Stubblefield: Mike, to be honest, people are [00:05:00] still talking about that, and that was a couple months ago.
Michael Gaddie: Yeah. I think the energy that you bring to a crowd is unbelievable. Your brother is amazing too!
Max Maxwell: Yeah, he's really great. He's great we always put whoever the client is before us. And with a lot of musicians, DJs, anybody that's in entertainment business that works with weddings, a lot of the time they almost make it about themselves. And you can't do that when your business is to entertain people. Yes, you need to be creative about how you do. You need to be yourself, but they come first. The song selection comes first and what they want to hear is most, most important. And that's really how we see it with weddings and entertainment, particularly if you're playing music, you have to look at the crowd and go, what do we have here?
Because it's not just a bunch of 20 somethings, a bunch of 30 somethings, which is what [00:06:00] most people immediately think, oh, we need to play all these music from this era or this area. No, no, no, you have people's grandparents there, great grandparents, aunts and uncles from a different age group. They may be 50, 60, 70's, 80, 90's.
And then you also have, maybe they have other kids there. And so you have to think about how wide that is because that's who you're entertaining to, all of those people.
Michael Gaddie: So for our couples that's listening out there and they're on a seesaw trying to say, do I want to go with a band? Do I want to go with a dj?
What advice would you give them to go either way? I know there's probably a budget information.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, there is. Because we talked a little bit earlier about how with the Crashers we have, seven members in the band, and then we have a group of five people who are our support. They are lighting people, sound people who set up and tear down.
And they're also there to help us with our social, to get some video and fun stuff from these events that we do. But we have all these people that [00:07:00] work with us. There's, most of the time a DJ will have two, maybe three people. They might be somebody who helps set up, but typically there's only one or two DJs.
And so the budget, that's a lot of the budget with the Crashers, a lot of it as well, when you're looking at that, think about this. You've got one or two people, and I'm not saying anything bad about a DJ at all, but you have one or two people up there that are go, maybe they might entertain you, they might not, they might just play, be back there playing music for you.
When you have 6, 7, 10 people on stage in front of you, it is a much a show, it's a way of connecting. To these seven people who are entertaining and playing music and doing, maybe sometimes we're not playing everything exactly the same way, with the dj you have the song exactly the way it is.
They may merge into another song, but with the Crashers, we may extend [00:08:00] something in the middle. We may change something here, we may take it all down because we're going to make it focus on the bride and groom or their parents, or their nieces and nephews that are having a fun time and they're on stage with us.
So with a band situation compared to a dj, you have these personalities of how many of our people are on that stage that are creating something special for that specific night. Which is why you remember, you're like, oh wow, did you remember when they got us up there and we did this? And do you remember when the groom got up there and they rapped during the show and the band played and they rapped the song?
Could you remember that? Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah, I remember that. That's not going to happen at the next wedding we play, it's going to be different. Now we may play some of the same songs because again, because of the age of the group there, you're going to play some Motown music because that's what they want to hear. But we're not going to play it the same ever. We just don't do that.
Kristina Stubblefield: So all I've heard right there is it's an experience. It's an [00:09:00] experience. And some people want more of a club style dj. That's what they want for their event. And I'm glad that you really touched on this part of it is about making it about the couple, because I feel like some of the feedback over the years I've heard is they've thought about a band versus a dj. Maybe that's something that's important to them because they really enjoy music. They like going out and seeing different people or different bands playing, but they have heard, maybe just assumed that it's all about the band up on a stage.
Like it's a, like it's a show and what I've just heard is it's going to experience pulling your guests in with the band. Like all tied together, not just up there. When you're doing your public events, that's different. You all are there to entertain and energize a crowd, but I've been fortunate to see you in both settings and it's amazing to me how [00:10:00] much it's not about the band at the wedding.
It is really about those couple and those guests, and we have people that listen to us from all over, even in different countries. And I'm not saying you all don't have bags and will travel because I know you all do that.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, we do. Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: But for those out there that don't even know about the entertainment part, they don't know what to consider.
They don't know what questions to ask. It may have been years and years ago their parents got married. Where would you encourage them to start or even get the ball rolling as far as the entertainment piece of their wedding.
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: It's a the tricky question, isn't it?
Max Maxwell: Yeah, the first thing they need to think about, just like we don't think about ourselves when we walk in to play a wedding. The couple should never ever think about just themselves. When they're looking at whatever piece of entertainment they're going to do, they shouldn't look at just [00:11:00] themselves.
They should think about everybody that's going to come to their wedding, that's what they really should think about. Because, yes this day is about them getting married, but more importantly, it's about the celebration. Their lives and their families and their friends' lives. If they think about it from that angle, it might be easier for them to understand what direction they should go. Certainly the budget will dictate some of them, but the bigger piece of it is that they need to understand what they really want from that piece of it, because again, I believe it's incredibly important to the life of that event and what they're going to get for the next 10 years from that same event.
Michael Gaddie: Something that you said earlier is, yes, you put on a show every weekend, every night, whatever you do, but every performance is going to be completely different [00:12:00] because it depends on how the audience reacts to you.
I know at the bridal show that we did, there was a little boy that just came up and he just started dancing and carrying on, and Mark got him involved and it depends on your audience too.
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Michael Gaddie: And the thing about when you pick a band over a dj, either one is fine, it's just that every couple has a different thing in mind that's more important to them.
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Michael Gaddie: The band may be more important to one couple. The flowers may be more important to another couple. But there's certain people out there that like certain things and entertainment, like you said, is the most memorable thing. Even though I hope the decorations are
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Michael Gaddie: But really when it comes to the end of the night, you all are the last people when they walk out and get in their car, damn, I had a good time!
Max Maxwell: Yep.
Kristina Stubblefield: Or this night, just this night just flew by. We dance the whole night.
Michael Gaddie: And I think that's why it's so important to just decide what kind of entertainment you have.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. Yeah. I think, again, what we find is a lot of times, [00:13:00] they'll book their venue and then they'll book their entertainment. That's typically how it works, because they have to have a place to get married to have their reception, but they, but the next thing that they're going to need to do is get their entertainment.
It's the second piece of the pie. All the other things are a different type of creativity, if that makes sense, because
Michael Gaddie: Sure it does.
Max Maxwell: The band or the DJ or that part of the piece and the venue, are kind of those things. And they're going to pick that because of that creativity, and they're going to pick that space because they love that space.
But then they get to create everything else. They get to flow into what they're going to wear, what the
Michael Gaddie: decorations
Max Maxwell: what the food's going to be like, all those other pieces. But those first two pieces are the ones that they're going to grab first because they have to, they don't solidify those two pieces, then they can't really, they creative piece of that. They won't be able to lose themselves in the creative part of that because that's really where they become more creative and you help them create those other pieces.
Michael Gaddie: So when it comes [00:14:00] to a couple sitting down, and making their budget, we talk about budget on here a lot, and without giving me a number. Is there a certain percentage that they should concentrate on? We need to put this aside for the band.
Max Maxwell: It's weird that number changes.
Kristina Stubblefield: Can I chime in here for just a second, Mike? I don't know, Max doesn't know about this yet, but we've recorded an episode, previously about budget and in that we included a worksheet just as an estimator to give you a guide and we'll plug that back in here because this is just a guide to go off of, but an average about that entertainment piece, and I remember it. I don't want to misquote the exact percentage, but I remember it being one of the higher percentages. Because it is a big part of your event.
Max Maxwell: It is.
Kristina Stubblefield: My question that I had is, do you encourage people wherever they're [00:15:00] listening from to go and meet with different DJs or talk to different people on the phone.
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: Bands, DJs.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. There's a lot of pieces to that, I just talked the other day, like I do a Wedding , . I've gotta do one today in fact. That kind of throws some things out there. It's kinda like to me, whatever vendor it is, you should know that those vendors have insurance because what happens in a situation where maybe they cause something to the venue. They cause something to one of the guests that are there.
Kristina Stubblefield: Well, they're plugging up to electricity. A dj, a band.
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: Any type of entertainment thing electricity is a part of that.
Max Maxwell: There's so many pieces that are important for most people but they just go, well, they've got a business, they've been doing it for long enough. They probably have that taken care of. I never have anybody ask me about my insurance piece of that, and I was like, Hey, you need to find out, because if you have some little band that plays in the corner over here and plays in the corner pub that they're going to play your wedding. If something happens in that situation where someone gets [00:16:00] hurt, something happens with the electricity in the building or something, it's a damage.
You want to be able to be sure that those folks take care of those. So it's a lot deeper than, they're a great band. I went to see them the other day and they're fantastic. As I should believe that you should go see them because you can watch a video of somebody a lot of times I'll see these really slick videos of these bands, and then, you'll go see that band or they'll play your wedding.
And maybe even the same people that were in that video are not even in the band because it's one person who runs that band. And when they go to, say Louisville, maybe they're from Nashville, they come to Louisville, they picked up musicians in Louisville to do that event. It happens more often than you could ever imagine.
Kristina Stubblefield: So the band that you could have seen potentially in Nashville that you booked for your event
Max Maxwell: Yes.
Kristina Stubblefield: Asking who are the band members, or who am I going to have in my event?
Max Maxwell: Yeah. Find out if it's the same people every time, or if they use different musicians. I'm not saying that there's anything really wrong with [00:17:00] that, but
Kristina Stubblefield: you deserve to know
Max Maxwell: oh yeah, there's a camaraderie of a group of people who have been together for a long period of time, whether that's a dj and I see a lot of now.
Kristina Stubblefield: DJ, MC.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. They have two different people that are working. Somebody's a DJ, somebody's an MC, and those people work together for a long time. They know how to read the room, they know how to read the guests. They understand that, hey, you know what? There's a larger majority of older people at this event, so we need to change what we were going to do. You know what I mean? We might want to play this type of thing for the first part of the event and then switch over to a younger piece. It's just a lot of times what we do because our bride and groom are in their twenties or thirties and they want to hear Lizzo.
They don't want to hear, the beetles, if that makes sense. And so you got to look at that and understand that.
Kristina Stubblefield: A DJ can't walk in and just hit play on a playlist of a hundred songs for the evening, but it does happen.
Max Maxwell: Oh, it does happen a lot.
Kristina Stubblefield: It does happen. That versatility of reading a room [00:18:00] and being able to be flexible and adjust, you hit on quite a few things there.
Max Maxwell: And when you understand, when you meet somebody, if a client comes in and sits down their energy, what you feel from that, it's more than likely what you're going to get at your event. It isn't oh, we're going to sit here and have this conversation, and I'm going to be like this all the time.
You're going to be like, oh, well it sounds like I'm going to get some pretty sleepy, lazy stuff. You know what I mean? You want to get folks who are excited about being a part of your event. Not that it's just another gig for them, not that it's just another event for them that it is important that each piece of the detail that they, do you guys handle this? Do you guys handle this? Do you guys handle this? Do you do cocktail hour music? Do you do the dinner hour music? Do you handle these pieces? And do you make it easy for me to be able to give you what I want? Yeah. You sure? You can put all that on a Spotify list if you'd like, and we'll play that exact music of what you want for the night.
That's perfect. You can select, you go from the [00:19:00] song list of this many songs and put together what you'd like to have. I'm going to tell you that I'm not probably going to follow that all the time because you're not going to know a lot of the time what your guests will like.
Kristina Stubblefield: But if somebody wants in particular songs
Max Maxwell: Oh yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: That mean something to them that are must plays. You all accommodate them, and a DJ should of course, as well.
Max Maxwell: Everybody should do that, and to me it's more important for them to understand the songs, that are on your list that they don't want. That's the last thing you want to do is play a song.
Michael Gaddie: What about if I come up and say, Max, I want you to play A, B, and C. And you never played that song before, are you going to take time to prepare for that before my big event if it's six or eight months away?
Max Maxwell: Sure. Here's the another interesting thing.
Kristina Stubblefield: You put him on the spot.
Max Maxwell: The question to ask, is," Hey, do your all's band, do you actually practice? Would you learn a song from my event? We always will learn one song for a couple.
Kristina Stubblefield: But [00:20:00] now you share about your list though, I know quite a bit about what you all do, but for those who don't know, your all's song list is
Max Maxwell: It's extensive. It's over 500 songs. So it's over 500 songs.
Kristina Stubblefield: You all been together for, you said over 15 years, which is something to ask.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: And you all make your song list available on your website. If somebody's wouldn't, you would, you should ask them.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, ask them. Have them send it to you. You know, I understand what that is. For us, like I have couples who have asked, Hey, do you guys play this and this? And I said, no, we don't. Maybe we're playing their wedding in a year. No, we don't but we rehearse every week, and so we're going to learn a bunch of songs over the years. So if there's a couple of these you really want these at your wedding.
And they, these look like things that we want to put in our song list. We'll go ahead and learn those for you. We do that all the time.
Kristina Stubblefield: But in your all's package right now, you all do offer to learn one new song specifically for that client [00:21:00] or that couple.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. And the other thing about it is that we have a huge list of songs that are specific to first dances. Because a lot of times that's the song that you don't know is their first dance. We know all these other songs, these dance songs, these other slow songs, but maybe their first dance or their father daughter dance, or the mother son dance or the anniversary dance or whatever other dances there are there's a billion of them, but
Kristina Stubblefield: that's another episode.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, it's all another episode. But usually it's one of those songs that they want you to learn and we do that. We add that and I ask to have it two weeks in advance because we need to run through it a few times before we're going to do it one time.
Maybe only because there's songs in our song that said we played one time that we haven't played again because no one's asked for it again, because it was really specific to that. Maybe it was some Disney song.
Michael Gaddie: let's go back to one thing real quick before we leave here. You were talking about if you hired a band and you don't really know who you're getting.
If you [00:22:00] got somebody from Nashville or somebody from Louisville, talk about you all because you, like Kristina said, you all been together for 15 years. And it is, what is it? Six people, six of you, seven of you. And all of you all are always there unless something dramatic happens?
Max Maxwell: We've never knock on wood, ever had a wedding, though we played some through Covid, we had some through Covid that we ended up having someone sit in for us, one in Cincinnati where we had somebody had to sit in because we had two guys out for Covid
Michael Gaddie: and that's impressive right there.
Max Maxwell: Yeah. And so you have to remember, we played somewhere which made 25 and 30 weddings every year for 15 years, and we've had one situation this whole time.
Kristina Stubblefield: That's pretty dang incredible.
Max Maxwell: It's nuts, but again, there's certain things that we have in place that other bands wouldn't even think about doing. They just wouldn't, because we look at what we do as a business, not as a band that plays on the weekends.
That's not what we look at, we look at it as a business and we treat it [00:23:00] as a business from every piece of it. You know how many times do they tell us, "Hey, there's an open bar for you to do that". We don't do that. We don't drink. There's people in the band who drink, but they never drink when we're working because we're working, yes, we can have a great time and not have to have a drink to do that.
And so there's pieces of what we do that are much different than everybody else is much more professional. Much more professional than a lot of other bands because they don't think, they're not thinking outside of just being a band that plays an event. We're thinking much more broader.
Kristina Stubblefield: I know we can keep you here all day with different things, and I really do think we need to do a follow up on this because I think there's a lot of things in this that we could go in deeper, really more like a checklist type episode, and we're really fortunate.
I'm not sure we say this all the time, but people in other countries listen to this podcast, which thank you all everyone for listening, and I hope one of the [00:24:00] big takeaways that from this episode is you've heard Max say, ask questions, go see them.
Michael Gaddie: Yeah
meet them,
Kristina Stubblefield: Ask about, you don't have to know the ins and outs of a band or a DJ's business.
Yeah, but are they insured? What's your song list? Make sure you're comfortable. It is an investment. It is one of the main pieces of your wedding day.
Max Maxwell: Really have no assumptions. Don't assume anything when it comes to this. And that goes with any sort of vendor you have. They want to answer your questions. We love answering questions. I love getting emails from people that are like, do you guys take care of this? Of course we will. Do you do this? Of course we will. Or no, I'm sorry. We don't do that, but we can do this.
Kristina Stubblefield: The other thing is I hope that people will take from this is there's no right or wrong whether you use a DJ Uhuh that has a DJ mc or a DJ that does it on their.
Or you have a band, whether they're a two piece, three piece, seven piece [00:25:00] band, ask the questions, make sure your songs are going to be accommodated. What it comes down to is the vibe, the atmosphere, the experience. As you shared in the beginning, the experience you're creating, not only for you all as a couple, but your guests that are sharing that very special day.
Max Maxwell: Yep.
Kristina Stubblefield: With you.
Max Maxwell: That's right.
Kristina Stubblefield: So I know
Michael Gaddie: you're awesome.
Kristina Stubblefield: You the crashers are based out of Louisville, Kentucky. I did say you have bags will travel because I know you've done that.
Max Maxwell: We do.
Kristina Stubblefield: And the other thing Max, is you are so well connected with others. If someone is listening and, The Crashers aren't available or it doesn't work to have The Crashers, whatever. I know you're always open to having people reach out where you can. You're a very good connector.
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: On helping find. The right entertainment that someone's looking for.
Max Maxwell: Yep.
Kristina Stubblefield: Hell, if you're listening and you're not even getting married, because we still have people that are already married that listen to us or their families [00:26:00] listen to us.
Whether it's a party, a corporate event, or a wedding, that you could help, connect up someone to help them if it wouldn't be The Crashers.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, of course. Yeah. I have a huge list of bands, DJ's just about anything you can imagine in regards to that. You need a sound system. You need something for your, a lot of times you'll need a sound system for your ceremony. We have that. We have people that can handle that kind of thing. So why
Kristina Stubblefield: and don't assume that your event's too small or my event's too big,
Max Maxwell: yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: As many years as you've been connected, almost 50 in the entertainment or music industry that packs a punch. So one thing I want to highlight, you mentioned in about the middle of this that you do Wedding Wednesday.
Max Maxwell: Yep.
Kristina Stubblefield: And that is on The Crashers Instagram?
Max Maxwell: It is.
Kristina Stubblefield: So you can go and follow The Crashers on Instagram?
Max Maxwell: Yeah.
Kristina Stubblefield: And there'll be links in the show notes. One last thing I want to say about this. We also put these videos up on YouTube, [00:27:00] so if you're listening, you may want to pop over to YouTube for this part.
But Max is, and his wife Deanna, are avid pet people, and I'm surprised Mike hasn't said something just yet, but I decided to leave the paw print blanket. I thought for sure Max would say something about it.
Max Maxwell: I didn't even see it. He even brought it up to him
Kristina Stubblefield: Right! Yes. So before Mike and Sharon or my husband Josh says, you left the blanket! That was on purpose.
Max Maxwell: Okay.
Kristina Stubblefield: Because I know that's something that's very special to you.
Max Maxwell: It is, I love it
Kristina Stubblefield: the stuff you do with rescues and everything.
Max Maxwell: Yeah, my wife is amazing. She does a great job with all that stuff.
Kristina Stubblefield: You do too in the middle of the night. I've seen it on Instagram.
Max Maxwell: I take them out to use the restroom at night and I
Michael Gaddie: you can say pee.
Max Maxwell: I feed them and I
Kristina Stubblefield: He cuddles with them. They take over your bed.
Max Maxwell: I can tell you that the best part of my day is coming home and laying on the [00:28:00] floor with the puppies all over me. That to me, is the greatest time ever.
Kristina Stubblefield: We really appreciate you sharing some insight and we'd love to have you back to dive more into this. Entertainment is a very big topic, and that's not taken away from wedding planning. That's not taken away from flowers or officiants or any other part, but it's really the gel that helps bring that whole event together to create that experience.
Max Maxwell: Yeah
Kristina Stubblefield: love to have you back to talk more about that.
Max Maxwell: I'd love to
Kristina Stubblefield: Connect up with Max on any of their social media and you can learn more about The Crashers at thecrashers.com.
Max Maxwell: That's correct.
Kristina Stubblefield: All right. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Mike, Sharon's not here, but what do we always love for people to do?
Michael Gaddie: We always love a five star glowing review.
Kristina Stubblefield: Where as Sharon says
Michael Gaddie: a glowing a five star review.
Kristina Stubblefield: Yes. Thank you so much for tuning in, and until next time, take care.