Break the Business Live - Jeff Michaels Band interview with Ryan Kairalla

Honestly, I never know where an interview is going to go. Occasionally they follow the script you provide with a few talking points about your latest record--ahem. LUCKIEST BY FAR IS ALMOST HERE!-- and occasionally you get a chance to talk about the topics you rehearsed that comes out in some manner that makes you sound like you know what you're talking about... but that rarely has been my experience. And that's why I love live interviews so much.

Ryan Karialla - jealous of my pop screen right from the start!

Listen to Break the Business Live (Jeff Michaels Band starts 41:25)

In this episode, we start of talking about pretty much how "seasonsoned" an artist I am because I put out my first few albums on an actual CD, where I then go on to date myself even more by sharing my fondness for Tom's white shirt from MySpace and our mid-2000s success on Pandora. From there... well, after we established the indie scene I grew up with in San Francisco playing with the likes of members of the Counting Crows, Train, and all of our uber-talented music friends no longer exists, we dip into the arhaic process of creating a demo vs. the instant fame we see from today's artists where recording a song in a bedroom and throwing it on TikTok or wherever and a few weeks later your music is playing in Sri Lanka has become the norm.

Yes, it's amazing.

Except Ryan and I were vibing on the fact that things like garage bands are no longer a thing... maybe there are a few garages left where bands plug in their instruments, open the garage door, and allow the music to blast from their Marshall stack and set off some car alarms--ideally attracting a legion of fans strolling aimlessly through the neighborhood desperate to hear the newest sound, but today the industry for indies is nearly entirely online, where music exists in a vacuum and algorithms are the new gatekeepers of worldwide music fame.

Naturally, from there we get into a deep discussion on the Law of Attraction, which Ryan, as a lawyer, originally thought was a real law he needed to research from a missed law school class. We set him straight, and had a great time discussing how I believe today's artists have the ability to pretty much be, do, or have anything they want in their lives, providing they put in the work.

Phil Collins came back from retirement, so can you.

That's advice that my songwriting partner Scott Barkan gave to me, which also came up later in the interview where we dipped into how we decided to team up again to write our new record, LUCKIEST BY FAR.

That's the thing with interviews... they may go anywhere, but you can still get back to your talking points ...if you know how connect the dots.

Special thanks to Angela Tyler for setting this up!