Music Studio Owner, Producer and Musician: Justin Koop of B-Town Sound

This is an old one but a good one so I'm reposting it. Why? I give a pretty damn good reason...

I dive into the world of music production and the evolution of the music industry with special guest Justin Koop, owner and producer at B Town Sound in Burlington, Ontario. They discuss the beginnings of Justin's journey in the music scene, including his time in a metal band in the early '90s, and the impacts of streaming and DIY recording on today's artists. Justin shares insights into how his studio has adapted over the years, his collaboration with notable Canadian bands, and his artist development initiatives. The episode is filled with anecdotes, industry observations, and a heartfelt discussion on what drives their passion for rock and roll.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Host
00:10 The Origin of It's 1 Louder Podcast
01:00 Introducing Justin Coop and B Town Sound
01:53 Transition to Magazine Articles and Personal Milestones
03:05 Original Podcast Intro and Justin's Background
06:11 Justin's Early Music Career and Band Stories
10:14 Changes in the Music Industry and Studio Work
14:18 Adapting to COVID and New Business Ventures
17:30 Artist Development and Industry Challenges
19:29 The Open Gates of the Music Industry
20:14 The Importance of Social Media Presence
20:48 Challenges and Rewards in Music Production
21:26 Balancing Studio Work and Personal Music
22:02 Dream Collaborations and Favorite Bands
23:09 The Struggles of Canadian Rock Bands
26:22 The Impact of Streaming on Music
27:44 The Changing Experience of Music
30:37 The Loss of Mystery in Music
32:34 Closing Thoughts and Future Plans

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello Rock fans and musicians. This is your host, PJ Pat of the It's one Louder podcast. I really appreciate you joining. I have a really special one for you today. So I started the, it's one louder podcast during COVID actually, believe it or not. And I was, it was just a way for me to, uh, kind of get out of my boredom and do something I'm super passionate about, which is obviously.

[00:00:23] Talking about and listening to rock and roll. And the initial idea of the, its One letter podcast was to interview people from the music industry, so producers, artists, musicians, and uh, myself just having fun conversing with them and hopefully you could, uh, learn a thing or two about either their music or the music industry, et cetera.

[00:00:45] And that's what I did. I, uh, had the privilege of interviewing a couple of bands, two producers. A studio owner and this episode is from that studio owner slash producer slash musician slash all around. Great guy. His name is Justin Coop and he owns and runs a studio here in Burlington, Ontario, Canada called B Town Sound.

[00:01:08] And how we met is he's a studio that I picked to record my band's ep we're called Witch of November. And if you do like the music that's playing in the background now and the music that you'll be hearing shortly after. That is of my band and Justin Coop was integral to recording, uh, an amazing version and, uh, super well mixed master produced, whatever you wanna call it, of our songs.

[00:01:34] I could be more proud of our songs. So this is one of the many fun episodes back then during COVID that I had released. And then to be quite frank. It got really tedious and complicated to try to book all these bands and people to talk to. And, uh, just a lot of back and forth and a lot of times some people didn't even show up, et cetera.

[00:01:53] And so I decided to change the idea of the podcast and just do something that I still am passionate about is reading magazine articles about the rock stars and bands that I love through guitar magazines and just rock magazines in general. I figured, hey, if I like it, I'm sure at least. Three people out there in the road would, and boom, that was enough for me to, to do it.

[00:02:13] You know what, there was some real gems back then those episodes, and this is what I want to share with the world again. I had taken 'em down and now I'm sharing it with you. And one thing, uh, that spurred me about this idea was that let's just let you know a little bit about me. So I turned 50 in a couple weeks and, uh, I am organizing a big bash.

[00:02:35] I normally don't do this. Last time I did this actually was on my 40th. Guess where that Big Bash is gonna be. It's gonna be with Justin at B Town Sound. They're gonna invite a bunch of my friends and family and my band's gonna play some rock and roll covers, and Justin's gonna be behind the desk there, just, I'm sure putting on a great mix.

[00:02:54] So that reminded me of this episode. Really cool. I hope you enjoy it. He's a heck of a guy. So here we go. Without further ado, I'll even play you the original intro. Here we go. Welcome to the It's one Louder podcast.

[00:03:18] You'll listen to great tunes and hear untold stories from the artist their managers. Recording, engineers, producers, and even more key players in this ever-changing music industry. So turn up the volume one louder and enjoy the show.

[00:03:46] Hey, rock stars and head bangers, PJ Pat here. Thank you so much for tuning in. You know when he first started this podcast, Justin, the person that we're gonna hear from today was one of the first people I thought about of bringing on this podcast. He's currently the owner, producer, and engineer of B Town Sound Recording here in Toronto, Ontario.

[00:04:05] He actually produced, recorded, and mixed and mastered my band's first ep, and we had such a blast working with him that I definitely wanted to. Interview him for this podcast and see how his business has changed over the last 15 years with the shift in the music industry towards streaming and home recording, I learned a ton of really cool things about him that we dive into our conversation, such as him playing in a metal band called Smoke and Mary Jane in the early nineties.

[00:04:32] How awesome of a name is that? And this is before weed was legal in Canada, so even more rebellious. Woo. We talk about his Holy Grail wishlist to record Monster Truck, and I definitely second that. For those of you who have no idea who Monster Truck is, go check 'em out. They're an amazing, full blast, hard rock band from Hamilton, Ontario.

[00:04:51] Lemme put it this way, if you're ever driving down the highway and you hear a Monster truck song come on the radio, you definitely have the urge to crank it up one louder and just put that pedal to the metal baby. Full throttle. So Monster Truck Boys, if you're listening, hope you're listening. Justin's calling and he wants to make your next great album.

[00:05:08] Justin talks about why he thinks Canadian rock bands don't see so much love and affection from the American market, so his views are really insightful, pretty interesting what he has to say about that. We also talk about how his image of Paul Stanley from Kiss has been completely crushed, so he explains why you'll love this one.

[00:05:28] Justin's such a chilled dude. And hearing his opinions about the music industry today from his perspective as a guy who's lived and breathed music for the last 15 years or more as a studio owner and a musician himself. It is really, really interesting. So enjoy this one with Justin Koop from B Town Sound.

[00:05:46] What's up Patrick? What's happening brother? Justin, it's been a while. Good to see you too, man. Listen man, I, first of all, I want to thank you so much for willing to do this. Yeah, me too. Really appreciate it. I thought it was really important to interview someone like you to understand the behind the scenes and behind the music, which I think a lot of the S would be really interested in.

[00:06:07] There's a lot of things I wanna go through, but. I think it'd be cool to start with this. Just not too long ago, I saw an Instagram post and it was a picture of you pretty much straight out of an eighties magazine where you had this long hair shredder, guitar, tight leather pants just shredding away. And so I wanna start there.

[00:06:26] Give me the context behind that and just what was going on in your life at that time and where were you and all that. My wife posted that just recently. Yeah, but that's a picture from early nineties. Okay. And I played in a, um, a metal band called Smoke and Mary Jane. Nice. This is before weed was legal.

[00:06:45] That is awesome. Yeah, it was. That band was a lot of fun. Back in those days, you could actually play around with quite a few clubs. The rock scene was really happening. There was tons of places to play. There's a great place right around the corner actually called Manhattan Rocks. Which was a venue underneath a Chinese restaurant.

[00:07:09] Oh really? Yeah. It was awesome. Everybody played there. It's, it is long gone now. Yeah, so that's early nineties. I remember that time. That was like the heyday of. Rock and being able to play at clubs. 'cause there were clubs everywhere. I was in Montreal at that time, and you could play anywhere, even like in high school, you can smuggle you way into clubs and stuff to play.

[00:07:32] The first time we went to Montreal in Smoke and Mary Jane, we went and pulled our singer out of his high school English class. Just walked right into school. I don't even think you could do that nowadays. Walked right into the class and said, we got a gig tonight. Like, we actually thought it was on Saturday night.

[00:07:51] Yeah. And uh, our agent called in and was like, no, you guys are playing tonight. And it was a Friday. We're like, what? So we went and got him out of the school, packed all in the van. Went to Montreal and played an amazing show with a band called, uh, thunder Circus at the time. It was such a blur. The whole trip was whirlwind.

[00:08:13] We went there, we played this amazing show, partied all night long. Those are the times, right? That's when you gotta do it in life. That was part of the reason of being in a rock and roll band. It was like, you live like a gypsy, just a little bit more off the grid than in everybody else. Yeah. There was definitely a, a counterculture and lifestyle that went with playing music, and there were so many clubs to play, like we only had.

[00:08:40] I think at that time, I think a four song demo tape that we sold and stuff. We had some merch and stuff like that, but we were playing one set original shows and getting paid for it. The getting paid part blows your weight. Now you have to pay to play if, if that. Sure. You mentioned you had an agent, so were you guys pretty serious and were you touring across Canada and all that?

[00:09:05] Were you actually trying to, to make it. We weren't really going across Canada. We were just staying in Southern Ontario up to about Montreal. Yeah, we were pretty serious. We had an agent, we had some label interest. The thing is, in Canada, the, the metal scene and, and record labels, they didn't really gel and they signed a, a couple metal bands, but they didn't really get behind it.

[00:09:30] It wasn't as much a Canadian thing as it was an American thing or a Europe thing. I think VO was the most, most, when you say that is the singer from Thunder Circus? The one band we played with in Montreal went on to be the singer and bass player in vo. Okay. Because VO was big. Like they're from Montreal, weren't they?

[00:09:50] Yeah. And even James Newstead from AKA joined them for a bit. Oh yeah. Once he left Metallica, he, he had a little stint with them. Yeah. It's cool to reminisce a little bit, right? That lifestyle and that time I'm fascinated like just. The, the change in the music industry since streaming and software's on your laptop now 'cause you could pretty much record on your own now.

[00:10:14] Uh, a lot of people do that in their own bedrooms since 2008, I'm sure you've seen a change. What, what are some of the changes that you've seen in your industry, like in recording and in studio work and different clienteles? It's changed a lot this last. COVID thing has made a change. Again, the whole industry has shifted wildly in the last 20 years.

[00:10:36] Everybody's had to adapt to the changing environment. So the first major change is that any of the labels that I was dealing with, all of a sudden don't really have budgets to make records anymore. So the bands have to put the bill, or the budgets you have to work with are pretty low. So instead of having a couple assistants and, and everything else that goes along with working in the studio for a long time, you gotta try to make as much progress in the smallest amount of time.

[00:11:08] I guess in some ways it's easier because you are using computers and you can do editing. You can form the record that way. As opposed to taking the time to flush out your parts and learning them and performing them, you're saying players would have to master their instruments more back then versus now is just do the four bar, eight bar, we'll just loop it and don't worry about it kind of thing.

[00:11:32] Yeah, which I'm not opposed to that either. I don't know if one way is better than the other, maybe before. You had to force the musician to play or sing better or above maybe their ability sometimes. So you have to push people, but maybe the musicians learned more at that point, you know what I mean?

[00:11:51] Mm-hmm. Because you can spend more time honing what you had to do, but now, now you don't have to take as much time and get as mad at each other. Yeah. I mean, okay, we're just gonna loop this and you're gonna play it for whatever, 10 minutes. You're gonna get the best part and we're gonna move on. Yeah. But like you said, it's almost a necessity to do that now because the budget just isn't there.

[00:12:15] They can't afford for a band to spend two months at a studio anymore, just dicking around half the time. Yeah. There's definitely less drinking and stuff going on because people are, are aware of how much they. They have to pay in terms of adapting. I know part of your adaptation, your business partners with your wife, she has that probably like a pop star offering that utilizes your space.

[00:12:44] So would you say that's one way that you've adapted? I'm lucky that I have a lot of space so I can have events here and that definitely helps pay the bills for sure. And they're fun too. We've had a lot of CD release parties, all kinds of things that it's all 99% music related. So let's give your wife business a plug here.

[00:13:07] Tell me about party, like a pop star. What's that all about? She has kids parties where they get to do makeup and all types of cool stuff like that, and then they do a karaoke song. So the the birthday person will sing lead vocals on any song that they want to pick. And then they'll get their friends to back them up usually in the choruses.

[00:13:31] So you have a gang vocal of kids in the choruses. That's awesome. And um, we mix it and by the end of the party they get to hear it through the PA system. All the lights going on and it's fun. That is so cool. Yeah, I'm definitely doing that with my daughter for sure. Some of these kids are, they're pretty good.

[00:13:53] They put some time into practicing and stuff and they come in and yeah, it's good. It's good. And we've, we've kept some relationships going on with some of these parents and their kids and they're just getting in more into music and start writing their own music and stuff. Yeah. It's amazing how you can see the natural talent just at an early age, and if they fine tune that or hone that, it can become a real thing.

[00:14:16] That's pretty smart. You mentioned COVID, how you had to adapt. Again, everybody in this industry has had to adapt because there's no live shows going on. Right? Even doing live streaming, you still have to try to physically distance people, so you need lots of space. Again, I'm fortunate enough to have a, a big space that people can do that in.

[00:14:38] Right? Losing some of the events has switched it over to doing more live streaming and, and stuff like that. So it's been an adjustment 'cause it's a whole different thing when you got video and you got audio and you gotta send lots of mixes to the people playing and then a mix out to the streamer and a mix for yourself.

[00:15:00] See what's going on. The learning curve is, has been pretty big. I think we've got it down now. You've had acts perform in your location, just stream it to their fans or online. Did you find yourself trying to promote yourself a little bit more online during the last year? No, not really. I think they've just found me through word of mouth, right?

[00:15:25] Been around since 2006. That's nothing to sneeze at. You built this reputation. Speaking of reputation, and I saw on your website you've worked with Walk Off the Earth Finger 11 Silverstein. S this is Canadian rock and, and pop music royalty here. That's awesome. Were you producing the whole thing or you were just like recording depending on the band, obviously.

[00:15:50] Yeah. It depends on the band Walk Off the Earth and USS. They had this guy TOS who was producing a lot of that stuff. It changes for every band. If there's a producer with the band, I'm, I'm working as an engineer. If there's no producer, then I'm helping the band produce their music. Just like your band. I can vouch for Walk Off the Earth.

[00:16:09] Man, it was so pleasant working with you and it made the whole atmosphere so relaxed and even though we felt we were screwing up, you gave us a confidence to do what we needed to do to get it down. And yeah, that's really important. Being a producer, you almost have to have the people skills to, to deal with the different personalities.

[00:16:29] That's probably half the battle or half the game right there, right? Part of it. Sure. I'm fortunate enough to work with a lot of very cool people. I can't say, I've never been in a situation where it, it goes sideways, but it's pretty rare. Everybody's into it for the same reason. We all want it to be good.

[00:16:47] Having a disagreement about a part or, or something, I think is just that. It's, yeah, we're gonna find some middle ground somewhere at some point, so I definitely try to facilitate that. Keep the singer's ego in check.

[00:17:04] No, actually, sometimes you, you kind of gotta get out of the way of let them, let their ego shine through their performance. Get it out that way. Yeah. I, I don't wanna get in the way of how people feel about what they're doing because I think that's the point of making music. If someone's feeling like they're really want to give it today and everybody's in their way, it can just get out of their way and let 'em.

[00:17:29] Do their thing and get it out. One thing that's, I noticed on your website, it's you have this artist development division where you help artists promote their art and take it to the next level. With a couple of bands that I've interviewed so far, that's a big thing on their minds. You could be really creative and really talented, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a good business person, which in today's world as an artist, just like you mentioned before.

[00:17:55] They have to develop a certain fan base already, a certain type of following before. A new record label even notices you. And that's so that's like a big part of it. I thought that was really neat that you have that on your website. It's something that we've been trying to develop more. The business has been in such turmoil, really just with all the different streaming companies and social media sites, and now that COVID ISS hit.

[00:18:26] There's that. What we started off trying to do is get these bands familiar with Factor and the Ontario Arts Council and just local sort of grants that they can get to try to help them fund their projects, which in turn helps out the studio. Like if they have money to record or or do some promo, it helps us out as well.

[00:18:50] So that was the starting point of it. Then hooking 'em up with a great photographer and some people that can do great graphic design and stuff. 'cause people are always looking for that kind of stuff. At least we can steer 'em in in the right direction. We have a lot of people that we feel are very professional and do good work, so we try to.

[00:19:10] Just help them out in any capacity as far as releasing their stuff too, just so they're not out there going, now we, we've got this recording now what do we do? At least we can help them get on the first couple steps. That's so helpful and so crucial these days because you don't have record labels doing that for you anymore.

[00:19:29] Like back then you don't, which is okay, because now the gates are wide open. There's no gatekeepers going, I'm not gonna. Not gonna touch that. So that'll never get heard by anybody. At least you have the opportunity to create a fan base. And, and if you want to do that, you have to have some sort of entrepreneurial spirit.

[00:19:51] So you, you need to set some goals and try to get there and at least take it step by step. 'cause most things don't just blow up overnight anyways. Exactly. There's a lot of years and a lot of sweat and tears behind it, even though it may seem like it's an overnight sensation to everybody, you know, that's not privy to the hard work.

[00:20:13] But yeah, you're right. I think the social online presence is so huge right now. Just like anything else, it's marketing, right? You can sound like Led Zeppelin, but if no one hears it, no one knows it. It's tough. Yeah, and there's a lot out there too. That's true music, right? Yeah. There's so many genres of music now too.

[00:20:32] It's tough to navigate. I just think it's changed. It was tough before the internet and it's still tough now. You know what I mean? But I think having a successful business at anything is tough, especially when you're getting started. In terms of what you're doing now and helping artists and producing it, what's the most rewarding thing for you?

[00:20:54] I think just seeing it come to fruition because there's so much work that goes into making even an EP from songwriting and practicing and doing all that to recording and editing and mixing and mastering. I love getting to the final product and then all collectively going, yeah, we did something really great.

[00:21:16] Nothing gets that feeling. It's amazing hearing the final product back. Just thinking about all the work that went into it. It's pretty rewarding. I can imagine. Now with all that equipment, all that space, do you even have time to have a band of your own and just jam with people? I got into this because I thought if I did this as a job, I would be playing all the time.

[00:21:41] I would be writing, recording, uh, having a band, maybe two, just not the case. That's not the case. Right. I do play on some of the projects that I produce and stuff, but I don't have time to play in a band. I hear you. I got it. It takes commitment and I've committed myself to making records and, and owning a studio.

[00:22:01] Right. Uh, what's your holy grail? Is there a band that you would love to work with that you haven't worked with yet? We're gonna make this happen, huh? Good question. I love Monster Truck. I think they're amazing. Yes. I love them. Yeah. Yes. I love them too. Like they've been around here. They're, they're just sweetheart of guys.

[00:22:23] It would be great. Yeah. I went to see them with a buddy of mine. I think they were playing Lee's Palace. Yeah. Fucking great fucking show, man. Yeah, they're so good. They're so good. Just a sweaty show. They just look like cool dudes. You know, they're hard rock band. They're rare, unapologetic. It might be a little cheesy.

[00:22:46] I don't give a shit. This is what I wanna sing about. Fuck it, fuck you. So this is who we are. That kind of attitude. Yeah, you're right. It's absolutely rare these days. They toured with Black Sabbath, they opened for them. Yeah, I heard about that. Toured with SLASH too. They did, yeah. Yeah. They've toured with some pretty big artists.

[00:23:05] I'm surprised they're not bigger than they are. What do you think? Uh, I think them being from Canada is, I don't wanna say hurt them, but it hasn't helped them. Yeah. You think even these days, for some reason there's a barrier for Canadian rock bands to break out big in the us. I'm trying to think. The biggest rock act is Brian Adams by far, right in the us.

[00:23:32] That was a long time ago, but in recent years, I think you're right. What am I saying? I think the biggest is Rush by far. Canadian Band Rush. Yeah. They're unique. Some reason, I don't know why it is, but it's like Canadian Hard Rock bands except for Rush. The hard time. I think it's been retaliation to can con.

[00:23:52] What's CanCon? CanCon is a law that they passed, I think it was in, I don't know, seventies or maybe eighties that the Canadian government installed on commercial radio and you had to play a certain percentage of Canadian music. It's Canadian content law, so every station has to play a certain amount of Canadian music and I think it's like 40%.

[00:24:17] I'm probably wrong, but it is definitely a, a pretty large percentage. The, the commercial radio stations have to play Canadian content, American labels. You're basically taking a big portion of their chance to make money in this market. So then in return it's like, why would I help you out? I gotcha. Now I got it.

[00:24:41] Yeah. Even though you're, whatever, Atlantic Records Canada, I don't even know if that exists, but, and there's an Atlantic Records in the States. I knew at one point there was. If you're signed to Atlantic Records in Canada, you are only really having a career in Canada. For some reason, that doesn't apply to going over to Europe because a lot of Canadian artists that are popular in Canada can go and play in Europe and they're very popular, or Australia even.

[00:25:09] They're very, very popular, but they're not breaking into that American market. That's 'cause radio plays their songs, is what you're saying. You're bang on 'cause Danko Jones. There's another band that just unapologetically just rocks. Rocks hard. They're huge. They play these huge festivals in Europe. Yeah, and I went to see them here in Hamilton.

[00:25:30] It was like maybe a hundred people. You know, there's a lot of huge Canadian stars, Justin Bieber, and Drake. See, we do well in the pop world, but. Right. It doesn't really translate success to the rock world, but you, you would think that they're under the same, aren't they? Under the same rules and regulations?

[00:25:50] They're basically American artists. They're all working within the American record industry. So that's a difference you think, is that bans here, just keep on working with Canadians within our industry versus, yeah, because. The UK doesn't have that problem and Australia doesn't have that problem, but Canada does.

[00:26:11] Why is that? Being artists on Canadian labels have always struggled to break anything in the States. Yeah. 'cause no one knows they're stuffed. It's not playing on radio. I'd be curious to see these days, because now it's all streaming. It's not radio anymore. But that's what's cool about streaming. I don't know if you knew this, Justin.

[00:26:29] So we have stats now. So now it's all about data and you can actually check out your stats on your phone so you can actually see who's streaming your music, what country, what demographics, what cities. So now bands are actually planning their tour because of this data and they can book. That would make sense.

[00:26:49] Yeah, the right size venue and all that. It's probably the only way to do it these days. It's the only metric that you could really try to be profitable. So it's all, it's interesting man, data's power. It's mind blowing to me that a company like Spotify can even exist in the way it is. They don't make anything.

[00:27:10] I don't understand that business model and how it's even able to succeed like that. Apple started that whole thing with iTunes, right? Yeah. At least they were selling songs and the artist was getting a piece. I don't know how they can. Raking billions of dollars and then pay out pennies to the artists.

[00:27:30] Like, it just doesn't make any sense. There's some racket going on. I'm sure there's lots of good people with the right intentions. Mm-hmm. But there's lots of big business with not the right intentions. They don't have the artist's best interest in mind. It's cool that you can still make art more easily accessible now, which I think at the end of the day, if I were to pick a period, it would be now like as an artist and as a self-expression type thing.

[00:27:55] Yes and no. I've been lucky that I've been able to go through the late eighties, the nineties, especially up to 97, 98, like basically 10 years between 87 and 97 was such a good time for live heavy rock and roll music. There was so much great music and so many good places to play. It's hard to say, but the way music is created now isn't as much of an experience.

[00:28:22] You know what I mean? Like it's almost like. It used to be like a, a lifestyle choice. Now it's we're just doing music. We don't have those. We just don't have those places to play anymore. Different times, my friend, different times, man. Obviously, it's hard to imagine a world where we get back to that or rock becomes mainstream again.

[00:28:43] It's hard to say. There's so many things for kids to do. They can play video games virtually and be talking to people from all over the world. It's, uh, it's a whole different thing. Distractions. Yeah. I don't know if it's better. You're not experiencing things in real time like you were. It's, there's so much virtual, everything going on.

[00:29:03] We're starting to sound like old men right now.

[00:29:08] Yeah. Well, I'm an old man, so just the way it goes eventually, if you are lucky enough, you get to be old. Yeah, except the fact that you're old. I'm just saying that it's just such a different experience. I'm glad to have seen it through that, but I think people would probably say that playing in bands in the sixties and seventies too, there's something that's so convenient about the digital era.

[00:29:31] You can discover so many bands just with this now, you know that before you, you had to drive two hours to the mall. Go through the records to discover bands or listen to some obscure station. Now it's all here. Like bootlegs and everything. It's all streamed. Yeah. So that's what blows me away with this technology.

[00:29:53] It's sad because as a consumer, it's awesome. As a consumer, you got everything in your fingertip, but you're right, as an artist, you're getting screwed. And what these technologies have done, they've commoditized music. It's like they haven't made it special anymore. If you want to see a concert, you just go to YouTube.

[00:30:13] There's no mystery anymore, which is why, like I was talking about having the experience through the eighties and nineties, you don't get that as a fan. You don't get that as a musician. Even just coming up in, in the whole industry and starting in clubs and getting into bigger clubs and that whole trajectory, it doesn't really work like that.

[00:30:36] No. A big part of it's like the mystery in that aura is gone. I, I was talking to a friend of mine about KISS back then, like in the seventies. You know how they were right? Like they were just otherworldly Right. How they looked and stuff. And for some kids they looked like they were from another planet.

[00:30:53] Yeah. And for some kid, right. You only heard their songs on the radio maybe. And also you had the album, but that's all you knew about them. There's nothing else. You couldn't stream anything else. You couldn't look at anything else. There was no internet. So when you saw them, when you, you saved for a year to pay for that ticket and you saw them that came into your town once a year, it must have been a mind blowing experience, especially with their show that they put on how they looked.

[00:31:23] But now that same kid these days, you don't have that because you've already seen 20 YouTube videos already and they're probably. Talking to you from their frigging living room at some point too. And it's social media. Yeah. Oh, do I know know this about you? Or you got Paul Stanley doing his RB thing?

[00:31:43] Have you seen that thing? I haven't seen it, no. What's he doing now? I look up, I think it's called Soul Station. Oh, it's a band. He's fronting and he's singing r and b. Yeah. If you want your childhood vision of Paul Stanley completely crushed, go watch it. Go. Go watch it. In one respect, I admire him for just doing something that's pretty punk rock like I'm doing this and I don't care what you think.

[00:32:09] Yeah. I'm not one to put down anybody's creative output or what they want to do, but you just have to see it and then okay. Okay. There's gotta be somebody around going, I don't know, man, like some sort of filter, right? Maybe he is just got so much money he doesn't know what to do with and that's what he wants to do.

[00:32:33] Who knows? I wanna be respectful of your time. So man, I just wanna thank you for this, Justin. Looking forward to getting back in there and jamming with you and just creating music together. Yeah man, it was awesome talking to you, man. Thanks for sticking around for a while. Thanks a lot, man. Take care.

[00:32:54] Well, there you have it. There's Justin Coop from B Town Sound. I thought it was really interesting to hear from his perspective with his experience and his background on. What have you thought about the state of rock and roll today and the state of music in general today?

[00:33:24] Man, I can't wait to get back into just. Studio again to just start jamming and recording Witch of November's second ep. Definitely some good times ahead with him for sure. You can find Justin at B Town Sound on Instagram and Facebook, but probably the best way to reach out to him or just check him out.

[00:33:40] And what he does is his website, B Town sound.ca. That's V-T-O-W-N sound.ca. He has a lot of cool videos on there. Testimonials, take a look at his services as well. Thank you so much for listening to episode number five. Means so much to me that you stayed till the end. If you'd like to connect, please hit me up at any of my social media links in the show notes.

[00:34:01] I'll put 'em all there. Don't forget to subscribe and download previous episodes for more insight from rock musicians and artists trying to navigate today's musical landscape. All music today by witch of November, Nick mastered and recorded by the one and only. Justin Coop, go check them out wherever music is streamed.

[00:34:21] Wink wink. Okay, bye for now. Rock on my friends.