[SPEAKER_01]: Hi and welcome to the working songwriter. [SPEAKER_01]: The show where today's best songwriters come to talk shop. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Joe Pug. [SPEAKER_01]: Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep on their inspiration on their process on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_01]: whether you're a grizzled veteran, scalping cold play tickets that you got for free from your friend at live nation or else a scrappy upstart selling guestless spots on the side for your gig at the local dive bar. [SPEAKER_01]: This is your show because ultimately it is whatever writer seeks most and ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, it's the first Friday of April 2026, and I thank you for being here this week show us brought to you by Bandzougle. [SPEAKER_01]: Built by musicians and form musicians, Bandzougle is an all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm old enough to remember when you had to pay somebody called a web developer to get a website made.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest this week resides in Los Angeles, but spent many of his formative years in St. Louis, Missouri. [SPEAKER_01]: Ricky Montgomery first built an audience on Vine in his early 20s before releasing his self-titled debut album in 2016. [SPEAKER_01]: That bedroom pop album was a cult favorite until 2020 when several of its songs exploded on TikTok leading to a deal with Warner Records. [SPEAKER_01]: His singles line without a hook and Mr. Loverman are RIA certified platinum.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all told, his catalog has more than a billion streams worldwide. [SPEAKER_01]: That grassroots support has led to headlining tours with stops at the will turn in Los Angeles, Irving Plaza in New York City, and the pageant in St. Louis to name just a few. [SPEAKER_01]: This interview was actually recorded nearly 18 months ago and has been delayed due to a snafu and ineptitude on my end, but I'm so glad that we get to hear it now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you'll enjoy very much hearing about Ricky's musical journey through his own words. [SPEAKER_01]: Ricky Montgomery, thanks so much for being part of the working songwriter podcast, man. [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_01]: You you spent some formative years in the Midwest in St. Louis, but you grew up as a young kid in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds like your dad was was even part of the entertainment businesses like a a gap for working on TV shows and movies. [SPEAKER_01]: What was it like to grow up? [SPEAKER_01]: in L.A. around the entertainment business. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're right, my dad was a gaffer, he was crew and yeah, it was cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even in L.A. it was sort of not that common, at least to my school, to have, you know, apparently that I so into public school and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were only a couple of kids that were in my, you know, position with that. [SPEAKER_00]: But to tell you the truth, he was largely [SPEAKER_00]: pretty boring because my dad, as I said, was like TV crew. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it was a union job it was stable and it was good for time until the writer's strike in 07.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I would just go after school to like sound stages like Warner Brothers or like Universal or there's several [SPEAKER_00]: And I was sitting in my dad's office and wait for him to finish work. [SPEAKER_00]: And usually we leave late at night and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was not the best way to be a nine, 10 year old but it was fine. [SPEAKER_00]: It was good I got to learn a lot early. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the main thing that it gave me was a disdain for talent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and it really showed me how little they work comparatively. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it shattered a lot of illusions that I'm happy to have shattered, given my job today. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, can you remember any particular incidents and you don't have to name a name of anyone, but what kind of incidents in general would make you look down on just the faces on the screen as opposed to the people that were working behind the cameras?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't have that many examples of that. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad didn't work with that many like big famous folks when I was going to I had memories formed. [SPEAKER_00]: But there was one story that I like to tell about David Schwimmer, who was Ross in France, and he's also a director and my dad used to work in a show called Little Britain USA. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was the Gaffer for that show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was one episode where my dad brought us to the shoot, the day of the shoot. [SPEAKER_00]: Because he brought us because steam was playing that day. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a private sting show. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the only cool music story I have with my dad's job. [SPEAKER_00]: But steam was like a guest star in the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not why he brought me though. [SPEAKER_00]: He brought me because I wanted to see Ross from friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go into the store, the store, the office. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, this studio. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a break between scenes in my dad brings me and my little sister over to David, the director for the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: And he kind of says, hey, Dave, sorry about this. [SPEAKER_00]: My kids kind of wanted to say hello to you. [SPEAKER_00]: And then he, [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't blame him for this anymore because I realized, oh, a sting was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was stressful. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure he was a new director at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: It must have been like 2006 or something. [SPEAKER_00]: And then he just looks at me and my sister and goes like, gives us like just the most rude, like not even saying hi out loud. [SPEAKER_00]: Just a total like, oh, man. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was tough. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't think you get a pass. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think you get to pass for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's busy in life. [SPEAKER_01]: You can say hello to someone to kid. [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, that's what I'm working with, too. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I'll do that on that hill. [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of a cool place for you to begin, though, in music and entertainment, kind of seeing like the greater your side of it, and seeing kind of the grinding side of it rather than the on-camera or on-record product.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you think that's shaped you as an artist going forward? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think so. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's shaped me, I've probably in a lot of ways, maybe every single way. [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know, I just, I think a lot about, I feel more comfortable around crew, which might, I don't know, if that is sounds tacky to say as an artist now, but I do. [SPEAKER_00]: I also, you know, grew up fairly working class.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad didn't have that job for long in my life. [SPEAKER_00]: And then he passed away when I was 12. [SPEAKER_00]: And so my mom was just like a teacher. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, sorry, my cats are freaking out in here. [SPEAKER_00]: How did it shape me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it may be really appreciate working hours and really appreciate unions and labor and just kind of, I don't know, how hard people work just to get [SPEAKER_00]: talent into a room before the talent comes into the room. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, it just made me like, I think humbled in a lot of important ways. [SPEAKER_00]: In particular, I just, I've never thought that being a famous person was cool at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel really lucky to have never had that illusion. [SPEAKER_00]: Part of that's probably being from LA, and just kind of seeing, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the tourism industry out here and like kind of, you know, just I think living here in addition to my dad's job and me, as I said, have to stay in for talent, not be not be too impressed by that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he just made me really thankful to to have learned a lot of important lessons early. [SPEAKER_01]: I think when did music start becoming a part of your life? [SPEAKER_01]: What first inspired you? [SPEAKER_00]: There was always music in the household. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad was a, he was British. [SPEAKER_00]: And so he introduced me to a lot of British bands early. [SPEAKER_00]: In particular, you know, obviously there's the Beatles.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a, there was a band he loves called Small Faces. [SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot of people seem to know anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: That he loved, he played all the time in the car. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess now that I think about it, most of my music listening life as a kid, my parents were divorced to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was mostly in a car, you know, outside of school, I was driving around my mom did a long commute to school in the morning, hour and a half, both ways, after school and before school. [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of it was spent in a car listening to my parents happen to have on CD or even cassette tape [SPEAKER_00]: My mom was a big joining Mitchell fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was spent, yeah, in commutes to and from school and to and from my parents' other house, I we did visitation half way through the week. [SPEAKER_00]: And in a graduate, it became [SPEAKER_00]: I never had a good internet as a kid either. [SPEAKER_00]: We always had really terrible internet even for the time. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just was left to my own device as a lot until I was like, you know, I don't know, 15 or so. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it was just what I could find.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was very bored. [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess music started with having nothing else to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: the day when Randy Newman there we go that one as well part of the boon though of um you would be for your age you'd be like one of the last people to have grown up formed by music like pre like ubiquitous internet and [SPEAKER_01]: You know, hearing you describe that, I think the one real advantage of that there's disadvantage is to that you can miss out as I did on whole musical movements that were really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the advantages of it is listening to the same damn records over and over again. [SPEAKER_01]: And there's something to that. [SPEAKER_01]: And I actually still consume music like that. [SPEAKER_01]: I like listening to nothing except for like three albums that I'll have one rotation for like two years in a row and then I'll move on to another three. [SPEAKER_00]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's that kind of deep listening is great and also listening in a car. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure it wasn't fun to be in a car hour and a half to and from school and all that, but listening in a car is a great place to do it to it was good. [SPEAKER_00]: Although now that I think about it when I was with my mom, it was mostly Dr. Phil tapes. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that I really think about it, but. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was great. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a great way to learn.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get really car sticks. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how deeply I listened at the time, but yeah, I feel very strongly that that's the thing that's been lost just to pick up on your point about listening to stuff repeatedly. [SPEAKER_00]: I had like a CD rack that I still have of like all the CDs that I, you know, whatever I had a little bit of money I'd buy, you know, whatever just came out. [SPEAKER_00]: And I do that too. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope that people still do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it's a lot less than it was. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I hate albums on the first lesson all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: And then through what you're saying through repeated lessons, I, I grow to appreciate it and it can it broadens my horizons and makes my taste more rich and adult. [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny and there seems to be even a correlation. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the more the more that I eventually love an album, the more I hated it at first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not to say that every album I listened to and hate, I'll eventually love. [SPEAKER_01]: But the ones that I do end up loving, there was like an inverse relationship to how much I hated it. [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Totally agree. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100% agree. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like there's artists still doing that trying to like draw you into their world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things have homogenized a bit and wanting to make stuff for the market, things that will be immediately accessible, but the ones that we all love are the ones that they're like, no, I'm going to create this little world. [SPEAKER_01]: You've never really seen this world before, so you're going to hate it at first, but once you become a citizen of this world, you're not going to imagine
[SPEAKER_00]: living anywhere else totally yeah no it's it's uh it's a I don't know if it's a lost or i think there's a lot of artists this still do that none of course now that i'm talking about it come to mind but uh yeah that's always been my favorite thing about listening to music is that uh that uh love for the album format as arbitrary as it can be but uh yeah body of work when did you start playing yourself i started playing music
[SPEAKER_00]: I must have been eight years old in a school band. [SPEAKER_00]: I was a yearly, so I was always a little bit of an underdog because my parents can never agree on what I was supposed to do, given the divorce. [SPEAKER_00]: But I played clarinet, and I hated it. [SPEAKER_00]: I hated that instrument. [SPEAKER_00]: I wish that I would have been better, but my teacher said I had skinny fingers, and so I could never fully cover the holes.
[SPEAKER_00]: terrible terrible, but I didn't until I was gosh, I must have been 13 or 14 and then [SPEAKER_00]: I kept skipping school or skipping my band class because I hated my teacher who's daughter actually just came to a show of mine. [SPEAKER_00]: Just, she's a friend of my sister and we just had a little moment, you know, bonding over our mutual trauma from events to them. [SPEAKER_00]: But it was a tough, it was, he was a military guy, so it was not the most fun out in Missouri.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also had just moved to Missouri from LA, which is not an easy culture change at 12 years old, [SPEAKER_00]: Um, do that till I was 14 tried to change to the drum line in school because I wanted to enjoy music. [SPEAKER_00]: I always loved music and right that was I was okay at it at that point, but my teacher said no, it's too hard to hard, but he really was task any. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you say fingers too skinny. [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing useless.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're you never hold a drumstick. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I dropped out of that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I half way through the school year. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I decided this wish to guitar. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: Not the work decision. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they worked. [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out the work worked. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just the wrong, the wrong analog. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's needed to change it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You never know, with my grandfather was the head of the theater department at University of Maryland, and he was famous only for misjudging all of his most talented students. [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, it came to Kiss of Death. [SPEAKER_01]: He told, uh, uh, he told Goldie Han, she'd never make it. [SPEAKER_01]: He told Jim Henson to stop playing with those stupid fucking buckets. [SPEAKER_01]: Like he never know what teachers, you know, they can really get it wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a fire, too. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, especially if you have like a good teacher who doesn't immediately [SPEAKER_00]: I might have happened to me because he played into my case. [SPEAKER_00]: He played all these different instruments. [SPEAKER_00]: He'd come in the class, rip on the drums, or rip on clarinet, or rip on whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was a veteran, so you could tell it was regiment, and it was strict.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, I think it gave me maybe the same for Jim Henson, like a more even more of an underdog complex and something to prove. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's ship on your shoulder, which I think every musician needs to have some kind of ship on their shoulder. [SPEAKER_00]: At least if they're, you know, self-made, any degree at all. [SPEAKER_00]: Awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: There you go. [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing like the teacher that that comes in and rips.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember having a good tar teacher for a year or two and I was like 12 or 13. Who's whole vibe? [SPEAKER_01]: He must've been going into the other room to get high before I didn't know that at the time. [SPEAKER_01]: Get now in red respect. [SPEAKER_01]: He'd get high. [SPEAKER_01]: He'd ask me what I was listening to. [SPEAKER_01]: He'd put that on a CD player and then he would just fucking rip on the guitar for like an hour and you got that 10 bucks man.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's sick. [SPEAKER_01]: So, it's interesting, it seems like your career in a way that is unusual for a lot of different musicians has been tied several times, not once, but twice, maybe even more with different mediums that have emerged, because even before you've been fully formed as the Ricky Montgomery that many people know, you even had like some success when vine first came out, you were able to find an audience there.
[SPEAKER_01]: is well, can you kind of just talk in general how you view different mediums and how you are able to communicate through them? [SPEAKER_01]: It seems like you have an aptitude for discovering a medium and then speaking in that language. [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate your research there. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I did start on Vine. [SPEAKER_00]: I think let's see your question more. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to not, I've [SPEAKER_00]: mediums, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean to turn the clock back, fine, 2013, January 24th, that's the day that the app launched. [SPEAKER_00]: I got it at, I got it the day after it came out, because I just got in my first smartphone. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember that I was obsessed with apps, which sounds dumb now, but you remember, there was a period where not everybody had apps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a culture, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, as they was a line in it was a certain shared shared language that you didn't necessarily have. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a phone with GPS for years. [SPEAKER_00]: I was all my friends are doing 4 square and I couldn't do 4 square. [SPEAKER_00]: I was so, because my phone didn't have GPS.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, [SPEAKER_00]: So, I just got in a new iPhone at the time, it was 2013, and I just, I was reading every news article that came out because I was like, I have a fuck, I can read the news now. [SPEAKER_01]: Have my news out? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That was an on Twitter, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: I was reading the news, still. [SPEAKER_00]: But, um, and there was an article from CNN that said Ken [SPEAKER_00]: world in six seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went, what the hell does that mean? [SPEAKER_00]: And I looked in there sure enough, it was about this new app that it just launched the day before, called Vine. [SPEAKER_00]: And I had already missed the boat I thought on YouTube at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: There was already maybe a three or so generations of YouTubers that I had watched coming go by 2013. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought, OK, this is owned by Twitter. [SPEAKER_00]: It's obviously going to be a big thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should just jump on it now. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thankful that I had the wherewithal and the time to dedicate to something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought to myself, if I build a build and build on here maybe one day, I could have a music career. [SPEAKER_00]: And sure enough, across many years, it eventually coalesced into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: a new medium can really bring the early adopter some sort of return and I think it's important as a modern artist to at least be aware of where the eyes are and what's currently growing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's harder than ever really, I think, to know that it's a really, really homogenized internet internet. [SPEAKER_00]: and you know, cacophonus as hell and in fast moving and stagnating in a way that it didn't used to be. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, now as we know, very political.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so I don't know, as it could modern mediums, I don't know, it's hard. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really kind of the wild west out there in ways that I never expected it to be. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of felt like it was going to become more and more, you know, liberal [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, AI has changed on the game once again. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think to summarize, point being of all of it, they can be very, very important for young artists or old artists to find an audience. [SPEAKER_00]: But gosh, I wish that there was more money in it. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, no doubt about that. [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm only about 10 years older than you, but there's a real divide in how a generational divide there of how we'd approached it like when I was in my early 20s It's still very much was like, hey, I got a friend that works at a label and the only way that this is really going to get traction is a label Whereas even then 10 years later when you were that age, it that divided already begun where it was like no I can use a platform to leverage myself into
[SPEAKER_01]: And then maybe eventually use a label for distribution or a business structure of some kind, but as far as finding an audience, it had been revolutionized in ten years. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, I don't know how I didn't mention my space yet, but I remember the vine thing for me was a response to 2013. [SPEAKER_00]: There was no musicians platform in the way that my space [SPEAKER_00]: I think band camp existed. [SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't know how to use that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still really don't understand that culture. [SPEAKER_00]: I love it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad it's there. [SPEAKER_00]: Really glad it's there, even though it's changed a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's the thing about the curse of being an artist now, I think, as you well know, is you got to keep up with all these platforms. [SPEAKER_00]: They're so short-lived. [SPEAKER_00]: And anything that's artists forward is balanced to not be that profitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you do? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you view this, but I obviously do it for my business quite a bit, but I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing that I always try to do is not just jump on a platform if I don't understand the culture of the platform that much, because I don't want to be, especially me, I'm like 40-year-old dude with a acoustic guitar, like you don't want to be that guy jumping on and speaking in a language and in a way that isn't appropriate to that medium, it just looks it's cringy immediately. [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know, I really, I try to pick and choose the medium.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once I pick one, I just, I want to go all in and know all about it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think sometimes artists can make the mistake of trying to jump into every single one and then speak in the same way on each one. [SPEAKER_01]: And it just doesn't work like that. [SPEAKER_01]: The communication is very different on each medium. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's smart. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, spreading yourself too thin is a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of us face, I think. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but uh, [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's probably wise. [SPEAKER_00]: As I get older, 31 today, not my progress. [SPEAKER_00]: Any time I say that, everyone thinks I'm in my birthday. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying that I should stop phrasing it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm currently 31, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm currently 31, anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: As I age, I feel the same way. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure that's not gonna change the next nine years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I still feel like, especially with TikTok, it's so, the algorithm is so alien-syll to me, and it's so sequestering. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like you can, for the first time, just jump in blind to a platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might actually be better than it used to be, because I used to, I mean, also on most platforms, I would still agree with your point, but there's maybe that silver lining of like, at least the internet is now, [SPEAKER_00]: Taylor made for each individual experience enough that if you post as a 40-year-old, you have a disproportionate chance of being given to 40-year-olds or people that turn out in that language.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's because that you mentioned that the internet was was kind of stagnating in a way. [SPEAKER_01]: It does kind of feel like that. [SPEAKER_01]: And when you think about what preceded it, particularly in the music business, it's like things were relatively stable technology-wise with some notable exceptions. [SPEAKER_01]: The music business from like 1965 to like 2005. [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_01]: That's 40 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it does make you think [SPEAKER_01]: even with TikTok, you know, achieving a tendency in the last five to six years, it's not, you know, cut from a whole cloth different than what Instagram or Twitter is. [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a very similar medium in some ways. [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I do wonder if we just will be here more or less for the next 40 years in the same way. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God, I hope not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, the period you're talking about, obviously, [SPEAKER_00]: I don't I'm curious while you put the end of 2005. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not that's a reason. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a year. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not clear on, but I want to know, but before you answer, I think, yeah, I mean, you know, the money side. [SPEAKER_00]: That's that's our financial profit peak, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Is that the 90s pretty much solely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always thought, yeah, and I know this is, you know, not necessarily a crazy point [SPEAKER_00]: We still haven't recovered from the internet and any real way in the music industry. [SPEAKER_00]: We're still sort of streaming occurred and we all went to it and it felt fine enough of a response to piracy and yet we're still there and that half solution perigatory, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: The vinyl's back, of course, which is awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember that I wrote a paper in 2012 in school about this new micro trend vinyl. [SPEAKER_00]: I had a micro trend class. [SPEAKER_00]: My teacher was like, I don't know about this one. [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably done for forever, but I won that one too. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, O5, I'm curious. [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you put the ear there? [SPEAKER_01]: I was in college in O5.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I first got an email that says, [SPEAKER_01]: an email address associated with a college, you're invited to sign up for something called Facebook. [SPEAKER_00]: At the, oh, that's fair. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it would be another five years before, you know, Facebook would move to the app on the iPhone and things would really change. [SPEAKER_01]: But to me, I trace social media, even though it was being done on a on a desktop.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when it began and also you're also at the height of internet piracy at that time. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's where you have like the RIA literally suing college students for downloading, you know, like the latest shaggy album or something. [SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't steal a car. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so to 2005 feels like the end of something because of what was going on with Napster and also the beginning of like the very very [SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's when I got my space. [SPEAKER_00]: I was I was 12 in 2005. [SPEAKER_00]: I just moved to St. Louis. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember I yeah, my space was like on every news story at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: My parents would not let me go on the internet. [SPEAKER_00]: I was doing lime wire. [SPEAKER_00]: That was man. [SPEAKER_00]: It was lime wire. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm lime wire days damn. [SPEAKER_00]: I look back on those.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a musician, I should be mad and I am to a degree. [SPEAKER_00]: that felt like pirate radio to me that felt like something special. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sells a boy on every track title. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man. [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny. [SPEAKER_01]: I like what you how you described Spotify as like a purgatory kind of half solution because it sounds like you maybe feel similarly to me. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't I've never had a huge problem with Spotify.
[SPEAKER_01]: The songs of mine that do well there I get paid for, you know, and it's it's it's fine, but it does feel like a half solution [SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like the payments haven't scaled in the last 10 years the way that maybe they that we all kind of anticipated them scaling in some way. [SPEAKER_01]: And I still think the product is way [SPEAKER_01]: to cheap for people. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that now that people understand what it is, they should charge more for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But their incentives aren't aligned. [SPEAKER_01]: Like the folks that work at Spotify, this is my personal take. [SPEAKER_01]: The folks that work at Spotify, their incentives are to just grow the market cap because they stop in a company and do that. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're doing it. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're doing it very [SPEAKER_01]: Ricky learned his ethos of work from his father, a gaffer on movie sets, who Ricky lost at an early age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Passing that sort of knowledge between father and son is a sacred bond, and no poet better speaks to that than Philip Levine, whose masterpiece what work is, explores the topic in depth. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a particular poem from that collection entitled Every Blessed Day that I think is particularly relevant to Ricky's description of his own creative path.
[SPEAKER_01]: first with a glass of water tasting of iron, and then with more and colder water over his head, he gasps himself awake. [SPEAKER_01]: He hears the cheap of winter birds searching the snow for crumbs of garbage, and knows exactly how much light and how much darkness is there before the dawn, gray and weak, slips between the buildings. [SPEAKER_01]: Closing the door behind him, he thinks of places [SPEAKER_01]: of the great desert his father said was like no see he had ever crossed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how at dusk or dawn it held all the shades of red and blue in its merging shadows. [SPEAKER_01]: And though his life was then a prison, he had come to live for these suspended moments. [SPEAKER_01]: Waiting at the corner, he feels the colded his back and stamps himself away again. [SPEAKER_01]: Seven miles from the frozen narrow river. [SPEAKER_01]: Even before he looks, he knows the faces on the bus, some going to work and some coming back.
[SPEAKER_01]: But each seal in its hunger for a different life, a lost life. [SPEAKER_01]: where he's going or who he is, he doesn't ask himself, he doesn't know, and doesn't know it matters. [SPEAKER_01]: He gets off at the familiar corner, crosses the empty parking lots towards Chevy Gear and Axel number three. [SPEAKER_01]: In a few minutes, he will hold his time card above a clock, and he can drop it in, and hear the moment crunching down, or he cannot.
[SPEAKER_01]: for either way the day will last forever. [SPEAKER_01]: So he lets it fall. [SPEAKER_01]: If he feels the elusive calm his father spoke of and searched for all his short life, there's no way of telling. [SPEAKER_01]: For now, he's laughing among them, older men and kids. [SPEAKER_01]: He's saying, damn, we've got it made. [SPEAKER_01]: He's lighting up or chewing with the others. [SPEAKER_01]: Thousands of miles from their forgotten homes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each and every one of them, his father's son. [SPEAKER_01]: Talk to me about, it sounds like a big dividing line in your life and in your career, as it was for all of us, you know, COVID begins, it seems like you've kind of entered a space at that time where you don't even know if you have a future in music at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then out of nowhere, where maybe it didn't feel like this for you, maybe it didn't feel like out of nowhere, 2020, [SPEAKER_01]: is when you have two songs just completely take off all over the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was mainly driven by TikTok and things just explode for you and not only are you back and you know in the music business but you now have a fully fledged career going, can you kind of describe to me like the mechanics, maybe mechanics is the wrong word, what did it feel like to go through that shift in fortune in such a, in such a quick time? [SPEAKER_00]: It was, uh, first of all, I should say, I'm very thankful for that happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was an, uh, unequivocally a great thing for my life. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm, and I get, I'm very thankful and I continue to be thankful. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, that said, at the time I was on unemployment, I had the year prior, I quit music in 2018. [SPEAKER_00]: In 2019, I came back in the music and I started working with my band of mine called The Honey Sticks.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were having some success for selling out shows in L.A. 200 cap shows, not nothing, you know, and then we, we signed to APA. [SPEAKER_00]: We just got in our first agent and stuff and we were starting to do stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: We just booked our first national tour as an opener for this band called Greer. [SPEAKER_00]: Things were looking good. [SPEAKER_00]: We had our big Canada included, big tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then like write as soon as stuff started happening by the way, I did have some stuff with the music that was going to precipitate to that 2020 thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I had just signed a my first licensing deal on my solo album and I've given this context for any fans watching because they always attribute it solely to TikTok, but there is more context and the context is [SPEAKER_00]: There were some online rhythm-based games I had noticed in 2019.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started to use my music a lot more at this game called OSU, which is like dance dance revolution, but instead of your feet, it's a mouse and you're clicking little bubbles to the beat. [SPEAKER_00]: OSU.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, [SPEAKER_00]: My music did well enough on that the company reached out to me directly the game company and then they licensed my full album and at the time that was like the most minute I'd ever made in music and that was before 2020 and then 2020 comes COVID etc All my stuff's canceled. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like well shit what now?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've I almost got it and then Yes, shortly thereafter the music started to pick up [SPEAKER_00]: And the answer to your original question of how was it, it was, it was dizzying because I had gone from starting to the inch towards some success, rug pulled out, and then my other project that's inactive and has been for four years takes off not my active one that I have a band with people that work with me and depend on me with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, [SPEAKER_00]: I tried doing both for a while, didn't quite work out because of how much work I realized goes into having a scaled project, which is infinite work. [SPEAKER_00]: But then the Floyd protests were happening the month that I signed, and I was at them. [SPEAKER_00]: I was very active during that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a [SPEAKER_00]: and it was an AMA political boy, and I felt extremely torn because my class was changing during a moment of, during the last, the Biden Trump election, and I was, you know, just of catapulting through classes, socioeconomic data to say, and so it was really, really complicated emotionally,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and, and I said, I, I, like, no, I'm chance to get fired my email and I said it was like, leveraging leveraging nominal success ethically or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I essentially was like, hey, how do I do this job during this time of unprecedented strife?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do I make this good for not just to me, and then he said if he did respond, and he said effectively, I don't know, listen to your fans, whatever they want, do that, and so I've done that ever since, and so yeah, it was really, really hard emotionally, but that said I can buy a house today, and what a thing that is, and ever thought I'd be there. [SPEAKER_01]: When you say that when a project scales there is infinite work to do, what did that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it solely, are you afraid mainly deterring or are you talking about keeping up with the amount of content you have to make with it? [SPEAKER_01]: What is the infinite work you found with the project that scales? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, specifically, I only have my example to go off of, so I'll just lay out a bit more of the context to answer that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, at the time, I [SPEAKER_00]: I had never gone on tour really and so suddenly I had just signed to a major label in the middle of COVID and I wasn't going to play any shows for at least I don't know six months at that point 2020 December and so [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you, you can't go to a studio really? [SPEAKER_00]: And I had to like completely, you know, change my recording dynamic, I had to get a new producer that was local to me, so I could go to the studio and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was living in a small apartment, so I had to find places that I could work out of that I could afford because my music, the money still hadn't come in yet, you know, from all this stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was working at my, you know, level of investment that I had had. [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, of course, I got a lot more of it. [SPEAKER_00]: But, [SPEAKER_00]: and then the tax payments came. [SPEAKER_00]: It's tough and so they are crazy. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, mostly what I meant by that was building out a touring history while scaling a big streaming project requires so much more time than I ever expected. [SPEAKER_00]: Not only on the road, but previous to that rehearsal time, but you have to pay for as well and book out and get a music director and all this stuff to fill these larger venues with audio and not sound like a local band at a barbecue. [SPEAKER_00]: and nothing at no offense to local bands of barbecues.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been one many times, but you see with bands too, you see bands that it when a project takes off and they've been playing tiny night clubs for 10 years. [SPEAKER_01]: And then if it scales, even if it goes to like a larger night clubs, never mind the hitters or sheds, often it's really hard to fill those places sonically as a band. [SPEAKER_00]: Totally totally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anytime I see a band go out there with no any years [SPEAKER_00]: You don't need track, you don't need these things, but to have a no plan is crazy and how many times I see that is still pretty amazing and surprising to me. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the loudness for us. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't ignore them. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't ignore them. [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of those few things that audience members actually do. [SPEAKER_01]: notice. [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people spend so much time in a studio context going over these, these like labyrinth, tell mooted questions about, you know, little sound details that no one's ever going to hear. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: No one guilty. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But then they'll miss. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you're guilty of that. [SPEAKER_01]: But then you're not guilty of this part.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then they'll miss the forest through the trees and not even pay any attention to how fucking loud their live show is, which like audiences notice that. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you really do. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think, when I, I'm lucky that I early in my career heard from someone, my producer, I think it was, I heard about the the psychological phenomenon of like whenever something is louder, you're more predisposed to think it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's so real and like simply getting the same mix. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I know you got some saying this for the listener. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, [SPEAKER_00]: The same audio mix, send us to your friends. [SPEAKER_00]: If you give the same mix to your friend you're giving notes to, put a limiter on only one of them. [SPEAKER_00]: Make one louder with a limiter on only one of them. [SPEAKER_00]: And send them back and tell me which one they like more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be the limiter every time. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe one on the rest of the mix is exactly the same. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly the same, exactly the same. [SPEAKER_01]: it's a trip. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So talk to me then. [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: Last month you announced the release of the new single Superfan and at the same time you announced that you're parting ways with Warner Records.
[SPEAKER_01]: All one time this must have been a crazy last month. [SPEAKER_01]: How did all that go down and how are you navigating this new reality that's in front of you? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm very lucky and I'm quoting my ANR here that I still have a career post-label situation because it's not the case for everybody and I'm not going to complain about anything. [SPEAKER_00]: I came in to a label situation as somebody that already had had experience running social media platforms.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did marketing jobs. [SPEAKER_00]: I have been a social media manager for clients before [SPEAKER_00]: And I know how stressful they can be to work with. [SPEAKER_00]: And now that I am, when I'm very conscious of that, even more than I used to be. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, so I'm doing fine. [SPEAKER_00]: They'll, I mean, you know, this is an expensive industry to operate in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so investment, much like working in film or any other place where you have to make large expensive projects. [SPEAKER_00]: Funding will always be an issue, but that's for another day. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, congrats on the new single congrats on everything man. [SPEAKER_01]: It's been fascinating to talk to you. [SPEAKER_01]: I love your, I love the way that your mind works on a lot of this stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much, Ricky.
[SPEAKER_01]: This week's show was brought to you by Bandzougal. [SPEAKER_01]: Built by musicians and foreign musicians, Bandzougal is an all in one platform to build a beautiful website for your music. [SPEAKER_01]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS, to get 15% off the first year of any new subscription. [SPEAKER_01]: Ricky Montgomery's latest album is simply entitled Ricky, available everywhere music is sold or streamed.
[SPEAKER_01]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song. [SPEAKER_01]: So let all that take care of itself and for you, just keep your eye on the song.