Hey Guys, I finally got the chance to do an exclusive interview with Daniel Mazano, the oldest brother of the Rock band - Boyce Avenue.
I tried to leave the conversation very raw to keep it engaging, It really has a lot of information on how they started up to the right now, i think all fans of Boyce Avenue will find a lot of details, value and juice from this interview.
Anyone really looking to start a musical career, a band, trying to breaking in the music industry especially as an unsigned artist and also through youtube.
Did you know Daniel Mazano is a law graduate from Harvard Law School and was working 40-50 weeks on a day job before he quit to join his brothers to start up the band.
Enjoy the Boyce Avenue interview:
So yes finally
Yes seriously sorry, we’re actually shooting a video today for our Boyce Avenue youtube channel, we’re starting to get back into it, and it’s been a while since we posted some fun videos, some covers, and blogs so we’re just starting to ramp things back up and post some original videos.
We’re at some shoot in a studio in Orlando, so i just wanted to make sure to get away for a little bit for somewhere quiet so we could chat.
No problem, so what video is it?
Umm...It’s a secret i guess {Laughter}
So you’re not going to tell us what video it is
No{Laughter}, it’s not a big deal; it’s just something we’re looking to drop this weekend so i don’t know if you’re subscribed to our channel so you could just check it so we’ll probably post it on Sunday.
Yeah course I’m subscribed, I like what you guys are doing
Thanks
Yeah, I’ve been following you guys from 2007 when you started, i think the first video that got my attention was the your cover of OneRepublic / Timbaland – Apologize, i think that was first video that really made me stick to you guys and i just kept following what you guys were doing.
I think you’re going to love the video that we will be posting this weekend
Nice
It doesn’t feature either of those artists, but it’s got piano and its a fun song that we’ve been vybzing to on the radio and we think it will be getting some VMA love, as in the artist that originally wrote the song, not our cover, we think they’ll probably take away a VMA or perform on the VMA so we’ll see.
Oh nice, I’ve been doing some research on your background before this interview and one of the first thing i want us to quickly get into before we head into the interview properly was that how does someone that graduated from Harvard with a law degree just go into the music industry, i mean are you using your degree or anything?
You know i practiced law for a little bit but all along i was doing music with my brothers and i always knew that was what i wanted to do.
There are a lot of things that come that require you to use problem solving skills and to use people skills and my degree and my experience in school have actually really come in handy.
For a long time, i was the acting manager for the band, we have a whole team around us now but there was a time when i really had to make sure we were ok with the contracts and figure out how to do certain things on iTunes, so a lot of research and education skills came in handy it hasn’t been a waste.
But i wouldn’t change anything for what I’m doing now, i really love performing for fans, and creating new music you know, it feels like I’m finally doing what i was meant to do but the path that i took to get here has served me well.
Ok that sounds good, how were you able to balance studying in school and still having the time to push out music, covers on youtube and let’s not forget practicing with your brothers?
It was really tough man, the hardest part was when things started picking up for us as a band from 2006 onwards, trying to run a big youtube channel and i was working about 40-50 hours a week at my day job.
WOW!
Yeah so it was a really big moment for us in oct of 08 when we were all finally able to quit our day jobs and able to focus on music, it will be almost “OMG” it will be 2 years October of 10 because our first European tour ever was in October 09 and I’ve stopped working for almost year at that point, but anyways it was a really big deal, because fabian was also working a day job so it was such a relieve to focus full-time on the fans, music and videos.
So let me get this right, you and Fabian were working full-time and trying to run the band at the same time?
Yes there was a period for a good while then that we were working because we had to do everything on our own, which means we also had to fund all of our recordings, our projects, buying cameras, so we were working really hard also with having families, doing everything basically, but on top of that we were still rehearsing, you know writing new music.
Going to recording studios on weekend and it was just this crazy process, we almost finished the entire album like that and it wasn’t until the album was pretty much done and things have gone on like that until the point where we could just focus on touring and the youtube channel but its been great.
I’m going to come back to you guys touring in a bit, but i just want to go back a bit to when you guys started, how did you all get into music, i mean three brothers playing instruments and singing, how did that happen? Was it something your parents kicked into? What’s the story behind that?
Music is always been a part of our lives, we’ve always loved music, my mum has a pretty singing voice and my grandfather would always play classical guitar and sing, classic Hispanic song, Puerto-Rican folks songs and stuff at family gatherings and on holidays.
So music was always something we were around but it dint really grab on in a really intense way till alejandro was about 13 or 14, he just started playing the guitar like 10 hours a day.
Oh wow, that’s crazy!
It was crazy, he’ll get home from school till the wee hours in the morning he would just play and play and teach himself and learn songs and fabian started playing the guitar about the same time, you know we’ve always been best friends so we all just started playing together for whoever would listen, we kept on and we knew that is what we were meant to do.
How long would you say you guys spent practising, for a newbie how long would you say they should spend learning and practising every day?
Oh gosh, it’s hard to say, it’s hard to put a number on that, the most important thing is to really put care on it, you know you have to be really passionate about what you do, you know the thing that matters most to you.
I think for us , what we did was to take every spare moments we have because we knew we were busy, we know we have degrees and families and other things that we need to do, but every spare second we have, we try and get together and play for people, we try and write music and do the best we can with it, it was just that passion.
You know it’s like i talk so much about leaving behind the day job and being able to solely focus on music but one of the things that was really good about having other distractions was that you realise how much you really like the music thing that when you get home at 7pm from your law job and you find yourself spending about 3-4 hours working on music or lining up studio to go and record or filming a video then you realise wow i would do this even if i wasn’t getting paid, you say to yourself this is fun i really do like this because a normal human being wouldn’t be doing this.
I think it’s the same with other people you have to really spend some time with it and make sure it’s what you love.
Ok, Alright, i want to go back to when you guys were starting up at 13, playing and praticising for 10 hours straight which is crazy, especially at such a young age, what motivated you guys, what was the inspiration behind that, waking up in the morning knowing that you going to have a structure to play the piano, learn the guitar, to do your vocal training, what was the push behind that?
You know alejandro was the one, they was a phase in his life when he just threw himself into it in such a way where i have never done, that’s just the way he is, he’s our lead singer,he just loves music so much, he goes to sleep listening to music, he wake up wanting to figure out whatever song he was into at that time, he just spends hours figuring it out.
I don’t know what drove him other than he just loves music that much, i dint have the luxury of being in high school or college when a lot of this stuff really picked up for us and became like our big driving force, i had a hard time because i was really trying to not get kicked out of Harvard law school, i was married, I am married, alejandro is single and i just had to be as efficient as i could with my rehearsals.
What i really cherish is when we all got together as a band and just make something come to life together, but alejandro i know there was a phase where he spent a lot of time just on his own really working on his acoustic guitar, i don’t know, i don’t know where he got the discipline, i would love to bottle some of that myself.
So you’re married now, how is the married life going?
Good, I’ve actually been married for 8 years now, i got married when i was 21 to my high school sweetheart, it’s amazing, she’s been really supportive of the music thing, it’s funny because everybody ask, you know adults usually why are you doing this music thing, you could have been a successful attorney.
What’s funny is that if anybody should be asking this question, it should be my wife but she has never asked because she understands that it’s a family thing, it’s something that we love, it’s our passion, she’s been a rock for sure.
That’s great; i can’t even start thinking of marriage right now {Laughter}
I didn't mean to scare you
It’s cool, I’m not that scared {Laughter} Going back a bit again, when did you guys decide to form the band, when did you all sit and say to yourself, we’re going to take this serious and form a band and come up with the name ‘Boyce Avenue’ how did that come about?
The name Boyce Avenue is the combination of the two streets that we grew up on as kids and since the band is the three of us, the three brothers it just felt right to use something that was personal and was a statement of where we come from and as far as when things started picking up for us or when it got serious It’s a really difficult question but if i had to answer it.
I would say around 2003-2004 we finally found ourselves in the same city, in our hometown, in Gainesville Florida where my brothers were studying and where i studied at some point, so we were back in Florida and we all were essentially together , we were able to play live shows and start recording music so in about 2004-2005 things started to get more serious and by 2007 when we started our youtube channel and it had taken off that was another level for us.
So would you say it helped that you guys are brothers? Did it make things easier for you?
Absolutely, i think it goes both ways, sometimes people prefer to not be with families or people that they know so that they could be forced to get out of their comfort zone, so they can try new things.
For us, it was the complete opposite it was one of those cases that it really really helped a lot and worked because we were family and we get along so well, we’re not like the oasis type situation {Laughter} where we always at each other’s throat i know its sexy to say that we’re beating each other up and fighting but we really don’t.
We respect each other and all of our respective talent and it’s a comfort zone to really be working towards something with people you trust that you know are going to be around forever and its really when we go on tour especially because we all share a room, we get along, i couldn’t imagine touring with strangers, so it’s been great, it’s been a huge positive for us.
I know we kind of skipped this when we started talking, but i wanted to know who the eldest was?
I’m the oldest
Ooh wow, so you’re the oldest, then Alejandro and Fabian
Actually no, Fabian is the middle brother
Ooh wow, so Alejandro was the youngest and that passionate
Yeah it’s crazy
Anyways, how did get onto the youtube bandwagon so early, how did you know it would be the next big thing, how did you get started, especially posting covers?
Its crazy, its crazy man, everybody is doing it now its insane, its funny its like we got the itch, its like we got the itch to get back in it and do some videos and get back in touch with those crazy youtubees man, so we’re doing some collaborations coming up so we’re going to get back into posting a lot more videos but to answer your question, its crazy to see that its the 3 year anniversary pretty much since the day we posted our first video, its a whole new world on youtube now.
We weren’t the first to post cover videos or sorts or music videos on youtube as an unsigned artist/band not getting radio plays but we got in early enough to notice that people were doing it and they was an audience for it.
People were enjoying seeing some of the early early youtubers posting videos of themselves doing interesting stuff, doing songs and stuff like that and we thought hey we could do this but do it differently, lets be the first band, lets be the first group of 3 or 4 people that actually do a video together as oppose to just one person with a webcam and lets actually make this professional, not like sleek and impersonal, still personal.
You know we filmed in our house, we’ve filmed in our bedrooms, we’ve filmed in warehouses, it was all about bringing people in and letting them see who we are, not having the lack of quality distract them from the performance and the music, having it easy on the eye and it really worked.
You see it everywhere now but at the time it really worked, im glad that a lot of people still remember that that it was our fresh approach and it was a way of doing things.
How would you describe the impact that youtube has had on your musical career, collectively as a group? What would you say has been some of the advantages and opportunities that came from posting up covers of songs on youtube? I mean the possibility of doing that becoming an overnight celebrity?
Oh Gosh, {Speechless} Its huge, its just been so big for us, we always wanted to get our message out worldwide we dint want to just do things locally, we knew they was a whole world out there that loves music and we really wanted to get to everybody and youtube has been the vehicle that has allowed that to happen.
We’ve been able to play shows in the Philippine, in Canada, all throughout different continents, Europe, the uk, Ireland, you name it and we’re getting request everyday to play in places like Australia, Latin America and we’re trying to find the time to get out to see everybody but none of that would have being possible honestly without youtube.
In this day and age, it’s just encouraging to know that you could go and on your own you could do something like that.
SO talking about youtube, i know you guys use other social network and tools to reach out to people, i was going through your facebook fan page and you have over 180,000 people on there, your twitter is well connected, your youtube subscribers is crazy, how do you leverage all those tools?
You know it’s crazy, people are spread out all over the place and that can be kind of a difficulty trying to make sure people know about your tours and the music that you’re putting out but i think they are all pieces of a puzzle, you’ve got your people that like twitter, facebook, MySpace, youtube.
For us, its about going out and making sure everybody has the opportunity to say hi, to let us know what they are thinking and maybe to listen to some of our music and so we try to use as many of them as we can, I’ve been more and more active lately on facebook, twitter in particular, I’m really loving twitter from the road, a lot of people don’t get the concept of it but i encourage people to join because we have a fun time on the road posting pictures and letting people know where we’ll be and so we can meet with fans.
Its just a fun way of networking with other artist and also to get in touch with the fans and then facebook which is huge because pretty much everybody uses it or knows about facebook so that really fun, I’m on facebook like daily.
Before the whole youtube phenomenon, were you guys getting any radio plays, or shows, concerts opportunities?
Before we started the youtube channel, we’ve won couple song writing competition, we also were getting some buzz on MySpace for our original music but to be honest, as far as the ability to do shows worldwide and all that other stuff, to really sell your music, it really wasn’t possible, it really i dint take off until the Boyce Avenue youtube channel took off.
How would you guys describe your music?
Our music is essentially pop rock music which really means its rock music with interesting drum arrangement, alejandro does our drum arrangement actually, he‘ll map it all out in his head.
Wow..He’s like the little genius in the group right?
Yeah yeah he really is, he has a good production mind, we produced the whole album together, we do that as a group but he really has a good mind for that kind of stuff but you know its a very electric guitar-drum driven sound, its rock music but very melodic acoustic influence and feel to it
A lot of times the easiest ways is to say its the kind of things that will sit with the fans of coldplay, train, goo goo dolls you know stuff like that.
During all this period, did you guys ever have a downtime where as a group things weren’t going well?
With youtube like a down period?
No, a down period in general, as for the whole group. Boyce Avenue, if there was ever a period and how you guys dealt with it?
Fortunately we haven’t too much of that, it’s been a steady journey we dint want to rush things so we took time to finish the album the way we wanted, we took to start touring so that it was an organic build and the only thing i would say thats been some what of an obstacle in this day and age is that it’s very difficult to get radio plays as a new band especially, but that takes a little bit of patience londontour and time educating people on who you are and what you’re doing and that's sort of the thing that we’ll be working on soon.
Other than that everything has flown very well we feel very good about the growth we’ve had with the fans and how nothing’s been too fast, too slow, it all worked out pretty well so far, so we’ll just keep building.
What do you think has been key to your success so far?
Honestly i think its hard work, especially when we were putting out a lot of videos and also to finish this album, i will definitely say hard work and I’d like to say us been grateful to the fans has paid off, i hear from our hardcore fans who say that part of the reason that they care so much about us is because we care about them.
What would you say has been some of the key lessons you’ve learnt as a band since you started up?
One thing that we are just starting to realise is that you can never let up, you can never let your guard down and you should never stop working, we’ve gone through phases every once in a while when get a little comfortable, we’re in a down face, we’re not working as hard as we could or as we should to connect everyone, to post videos, to stay in touch.
I’ve learnt over time that you really do need to fight through those patches and make sure to always be there for everybody and try to be active. I feel like it keeps your music better, it can get crazy but i feel its a very important ingredient to doing well.
I was trying to remember something whilst you were talking{PAUSE}, yes i got it, they was a show you guys performed at and managed to draw a crowd of 20,000 and this was before you got signed, can you tell us about, what’s the story behind that?
Actually what happened was that we went to the Philippines for the first time ever in February 2009, the promoter brought us over and they set up four shows and we weren’t really sure how it would go but over the course of those four shows we ended up playing for, i guess everybody estimated close to 20,000 Filipinos fans.
It was just insane to have had that experience and to have that kind of turnout as an unsigned artist and band was really mind-blowing for us and that’s just an example of a country that really gets youtube and appreciate acoustic music, we’re starting to see that as we tour more and more around in Europe that a lot of the fans there are very similar.
They get it, they like the music, they love the show they keep coming back and it’s been exciting to see it keep growing in Europe as well.
That does sound amazing, 20,000 people
Yeah the show was just really mind blowing.
How did you guys get a manager or get some management, how it happen?
He actually found us on MySpace and reached out and we stayed in touch and since there they were from Florida, they just came to couple of our shows and we just have a really good feeling about them and since we’ve done a lot of things on our own for long enough we felt like a manager can help take it to the next level and so we signed up with them and it’s been really good ever since.
Ok that sounds good, what country has been your best place to perform so far?
It’s really hard to say because every place is different, every place we’ve played has their own flavour and the fans bring their own personality to the show, it’s really hard to say i know i can definitely say there is something very uniquely fun about uk and Europe shows, there’s something about the passion that the Europeans have for live music that you don’t always get everywhere else and that’s been our favourite thing about touring in Europe for sure.
So what would you say has been your most memorable experience so far?
You know that first show we did in the Philippines is one that always stick with me just because to go from doing smaller shows in your own country to just being in a totally foreign territory and have the people turn out in such big numbers, with such enthusiasm for your music and when you get on stage with that level of intensity and screaming and cheering, it was a very memorable moment.
Who are your musical inspirations?
The goo goo dolls, john mayer, cold play, train, oasis – a lot of these band have really been big influences for us.
Ok, so what do you guys do for fun, to take the edge off?
You know we work out sometimes, we’re not really great about that {Laughter} but we play basketball or fabian and i will play poker, we like to spend a lot of our time with our family, watch movies, TV shows, DVDs and stuff like that, you know just the usual kind of stuff.
What TV shows are you into at the moment?
We’ve been really into Dexter lately, fabian got all into lost and you know that finished quite recently we were into that a couple of tours ago, someone just got me into the tudors, im just starting and i really like it and we’re all really into entourage.
Entourage, I’ve had a few people telling to watch it so anyways let’s talk about you guys getting signed by universal, i know earlier this year you guys got signed by them, how did that come about and what are the benefits of getting signed to a major label?
You know they have been following us for a while and we wanted to wait until we have established our touring base and had done more things for ourselves and had finished the album, but at some point we were about to release the album on our own under our label 3peace records they just decided that wanted to work with us, they seemed to really get our music and where we wanted to go with everything so we signed up.
The thing with major labels is that honestly it’s very radio driven so again that’s part of the whole thing that we’re working on right now, is to just build the radio presence and that takes time, takes patience but really we’ve mostly being doing what we’ve always done until the radio story starts kicking in.
People think that a major label does a tone of stuff for you but they really don’t so yeah we’re pretty much just doing our own thing.
Getting signed by a major label doesn’t it help with your distribution, getting press, getting shows, concerts, TV and stuff like that?
It helps but they are really hesitant to do anything these days until something starts really really working at radio, so until the radio story picks up a lot of label won’t do physical cd anymore, they just do digital releases, so it depends on what label you’re with and it depends on the deal, it depends on what the situation is, i just think that it’s very inflated what people think that label actually do or how instrumental they are.
I think that if you got something going on your own that you’ll find that sometimes they don’t actually do a whole hell of a lot but they are still the best means of still getting your music out there to the masses especially if you don’t have a whole lot going on internet-wise, but it’s been good i just think we just have to keep at it and see where it goes.
So i just wanted to move on to talk about your new album and the reception it’s been getting so far?
The album is called “all we have left” and it’s something that we’ve been working on for a few years, we produced the whole thing ourselves, wrote every single song, every word, every drum part, string part, it’s a very personal personal project.
I’m really starting to wonder why you guys really need a major label, you guys are touring by yourself, making music yourself, taking care of the expenses yourself, i really don’t see necessity or the value of getting signed nowadays, i think the value of getting these day and age has decreased.
Yeah you’re absolutely right, i mean the problem is that we really believe in our original music, we feel that it has the potential to affect people in a very big way, we want to get our music out to as many people as possible unfortunately they are still a few things like radio, syncs and TV and movies that are still a good way of helping to do that but you’re absolutely right to point out that we’ve been very successful on our own and we’re grateful for that and we’re going to keep doing that honestly.
We’re actually going to make a big thing at the end of this year, to do some cool collaboration with other youtube artists and do some fun stuff so that our youtube fans can still feel the love but you know the album is still an important thing for us.
For us doing cover videos and doing blogs or whatever is great but at the end of the day, a lot of what we play at live shows and a lot of what our fans keep coming back and wanting to hear is the original music because it’s really personal and they know how much we care about it and so the album was just a completion of that.
We did the music video for every breath, and we did some videos in the studio. We did some live videos that people have really loved so we’re just going to keep doing things like that so that people can appreciate the original music
So quickly when are you guys going to be in the UK?
We’ll be in the UK in November, we’re doing UK from nov 16th to nov 23rd, we’re playing London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast and then we’re playing in Dublin.
Great, will definitely see you guys at the London event, But Before we wrap i just wanted to know if you have any tips, techniques that you could share with upcoming artists and bands out there?
I would just say to work very hard, make sure that you are genuine with your fans and appreciative and to use the internet as much as possible, it’s a great resource its competitive and its tough and it’s not the answer to all your or every other’s problem but it is a good way to get your music and your message out to a broader audience so i do think people should give it a shot.
Thank you so much Daniel for your time i know it’s been crazy taking time to do this with the shoot going, really appreciate it
Thank you so much i really appreciate it
Not a problem
