I'm Robbie Paynter.

I'm the singer songwriter for about to sweat.

actively, at least consciously 12.

But according to my mother, I've been into it my whole life.

Like, apparently I don't have memory of this when I was four years old.

I would run around with a paper guitar and make up songs about my great grandma's pecan pie and rock star slide across the floor, sing about nut pie all day.

It was so ridiculous.

But About 12.

I remember my dad.

We were in a Ross Ross dress for less, and, I saw a terrible $60 first act guitar, and I was like, you don't have to get me anything for four years.

Just give me this guitar, please.

And I mean, that first day I got it, I annoyed the whole family because I was just going around being like.

I figured out how to play smoke on the watered up one string and, yeah, it's like my my brain exploded as soon as I created the first thing on guitar.

It was just like, I kind of knew I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to put my time into.

I think part of it had to do with my uncle.

One of the first times that I ever saw him play was, he was playing guitar, and he plays like Hendrix, so he plays upside down and backwards.

And I was just enamored.

I was like, he's creating these incredible tones and sounds.

And so the first time I had a chance to really get my hands on one, I did.

Not to mention I had a like, inherited guitar that my mom was given when she was young, that it was almost like she's like, one day you could you should learn how to play this.

But now I do.

So it feels nice that they did what she wanted to do.

And But I remember my first, first gig was at the Fine Wine Bar out in Nevada when they had first opened up.

I mean, that's like, what, eight years ago now?

Nine years ago.

But yeah, I love, first gigs were very small.

I didn't even own a microphone yet.

I would just sit on my amp and sing as loud as I could.

I tried really hard to make sure I could feel like at the end of the day, I'm like, that sounds like me.

Which was a really long trial and error process, but I think some of the major influences would still have to be like, as far as songwriting goes, like Benjamin Gebhard, Guy from Death Cab for cutie is amazing songwriter.

I love Incubus was also very like some of the first crazy chord shapes I learned was trying to learn how to play Incubus songs.

And then even Red Hot Chili Peppers.

As far as, like putting energy in a song and letting it dynamically move around.

I think there's some of the best I ever do that.

We always flip between to Major John because we kind of land in between indie soul or jazz rock.

We like to think it has that kind of mixture of, like, kind of psychedelic sounds or as we like to put it to, is like jazz chords with rock and tension is, you know, putting a little energy behind a little bit more jazzy style chords.

sweaty guy?

Oh, really sweaty guy.

It wasn't even creative.

It was just, I thought it was very funny.

I mean, this is like six years ago now that I told my buddy, I was like, wouldn't it be funny if we, like, got on mic and we're like, we're about to sweat and then we do this.

we've got so me and, we've got, Josh Zook on saxophone.

He's been with us for a while now.

He's absolutely incredible.

Yeah.

Hayden Welch on drums.

We have Adrian Boland on bass and Chase Casco on trombone.

Some of the songs I thought were finished, and then we got like a new band member and it was like, oh, this song wasn't finished.

There was new ideas that needed to be added for it to feel a certain way.

But I think in this group now, it's with all five of us.

There's a really good point of communication where we can say like, hey, let's just try everyone's ideas, let's see what everyone's ideas are, and we'll do them all.

And we are yet to have a moment where it's like, yeah, that one sounds best.

And there's never changes.

Like I think the other one sounds best like that.

You can just feel whenever it kind of homogenize us into that complete picture.

I think a lot of music captures people's like a section of a person's life.

And, yeah, that right now I'm really excited to finally capture what feels like a lot of the best things that I've written through my 20s.

And now it's like, I can, like, put a cap on it and be like, those are done and focus on creating even more new stuff.

But now is the first step of many steps, and making sure that we get it out there in a right way.

A lot of modern music is a lot of what modern music success relies on marketing, which is not something that any of us spent our development years focusing on.

So we've been creating a strategy for the past year and a half of how we're going to release the music and kind of attack social media and like a campaign of sorts.

I pretty much everything about music excites me.

I mean, like I said of when I was a young kid, apparently that was all I was obsessed with by the time I was 12.

And I first got a guitar in my hands.

Just took over my life from that point, I literally, I think a month after I got my guitar, I was like, I think this is what I'm going to try to do to my whole family's detriment.

I'm excited about it.

Come.

So what's the difference between doing those solo gigs and playing with a group?

And in your opinion, if there's a huge dynamic difference of like with music, an important thing is always like knowing your role within the song is you should try to serve the song.

Generally speaking, it's the solo.

It's just up to you to make all of those decisions and to kind of create whatever you want to do.

And dynamically, it's almost a lot more pressure.

You've got to create all the dynamics and all of the changes, whereas there's a different kind of pressure with the band of making sure you're adding without stepping on anybody and trying to, you know, a lot of music is collaboration, and the band especially is just all about collaboration, making sure everyone gets their ideas out and that no one feels like they're creatively being squashed.

So who are the people that are playing tonight with about this?

Well, I want to talk a little bit about, writing music and creating music.

Tell me a little bit about your creative process.

How do you do it?

It's, I, I think there's a lot of people that have different, like, methodologies behind it.

I maybe have 1 or 2 songs where the lyrics were written first.

But 90% of the things that I write, it's me are I find some piece of music, some chord progression, some melody that I like, and I'll just sit and play that for a couple hours and like, make nonsense sounds until I kind of like syllables start to form, consonants start to form, and then words start to form, and then an idea comes out, from just kind of the subconscious train of thought, of trying to find a melody within the music.

And then from there, it just is trying to expand on whatever lyrical idea it becomes.

The basis of.

And I also firmly believe in rewriting, like if it's one of the best things you can do to a song is like, write it and then try to rewrite it again, see if you can do it any better, and then try to rewrite it again.

And you never know, it might be the second or third version that's best, but I always feel like you can find something new and attempting to find something new within it.

So when do you know if the song is finished?

That's a hard question.

That's a really hard question.

I just want to make sure I understand.

Do you bring in the, the songs and then, in other words, are you responsible with the music and the lyrics?

And bring it to the band?

Yeah, primarily right now.

Start I, I start start with the I. Yeah.

Yeah, I will create a song on my own, and usually I won't bring it to the group until it's a fully fleshed out concept.

From there, things might change.

You know, depending on what people's ideas are.

But the main thing is just, coming in with, like, a full, cohesive piece.

So it's not so much, mystery, especially with all of our band members are very busy musicians, and they work a lot and they work with a lot of people.

And so we don't have as much time to sit and kind of just be creative.

It's more of a like, how can we really apply this and not waste, you know, eight hours on a Saturday trying to figure something out?

So why do you think it's important for bands, any bands to, you know, transition from, cover music in clubs to plan their original music?

Why why do you think it's important that a band make that step?

I think for some people it may not be important, you know, and I think that's perfectly fine.

The music can serve whatever purpose you want it to serve in your life.

But for me, I think that since I was a little kid, I think I wrote my first song when I was like 14.

And from that point on, I wrote probably anywhere from 3 to 4 songs every year.

And to me, it just means the most to try to satisfy my soul and get that music out.

My two selfish goals with music was just feels bad to say, but my two are.

If I can have somebody ever come up to me and say, like, your music changed my life, that's, you know, that would be incredible.

I can't imagine anything more humbling and just more, heavy and it's effect.

And aside from that, I'd love to play for, like a thousand people someday and hear some of my lyrics come right back at me like it would be.

It'd be incredible.

Is there anything else you would like people to know about you, or is the band?

That's a tough one to.

I think our, our primary goal with all of this is to try to create something that feels like uniquely us, like we don't want to kind of have people listen to an album of ours and be like, you know who they sound like?

It would be awesome for people to listen to it be like, this band sounds like this band.

Because that's that's really the goal to me.

I, I spent a lot of my musical journey forcibly not educating myself, which was a brutal way to do it.

But I just I thought about how for decades and centuries, even the only way that people created music was by the tiny bit of influence they would get here, there.

But aside from that, you created music at home with your family or your community that created so much originality and unique sounding music, and that happens internationally.

That's how we have such incredible global sounds.

So my goal going into all of this, like the whole life journey of music, was to try to find a way to create a wholly original sound that feels just like us, and it doesn't feel like we're replicating anything.

I first, so I had set goals for myself going into music because everyone in my family's like, well, what are you really going to do?

So, my, my goals were, if I can get any money with music before 21 and if I can be full time by 25, I had my first paid gig at 20, and I went full time at 24, so I just beat all those margins where I managed to kind of stay within it.

Robbie, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

And, tell us a little bit about your music.

How would you describe it?

Do you have musicians in your family?

Just 1 or 2.

Not a lot.

My uncle was probably one of the main musicians that, like, left some kind of lasting influence on me.

When I was younger, he would send me these mixtapes that he would make that had, like, the Flaming Lips and like, Radiohead and just all this crazy stuff that I had never heard before.

And that was a huge inspiration of just like, oh, there's this whole vast world of music, not just necessarily what's it in top 40?

So that was it was fun.

And he's.

Yeah.

Uncle's the main guy to really influence all that.

Otherwise, we just got a couple people that did a little bit of singing here and there.

But he's the only full time musician in the family.

I wanted to talk about, playing with horns.

Did you always, have the opportunity to play with horns with a band switch.

Yeah.

Tell us about that.

Yeah.

That was super exciting.

When the way that it first happened is actually when I met Josh, we had a keys player that was with us for a short while.

And he ended up moving to a different state.

And, you know, we're never going to be like, you know, screw you, man.

You have to stay here.

After he moved away, we were it was right in the middle of winter.

So we had an opportunity to be like, let's change the dynamics of the band.

Let's try to find somebody that's going to kind of created, you know, more modern, newer sound that feels fresh to us.

And I just heard about Josh and I reached out to him and, I mean, instantly clicked.

I mean, as soon as he played one show with us, we were like, this is awesome.

And then our trombone player, somebody I went to high school with, so we go way back and, I found out that he was performing in orchestras in the northeast, and I talked to him about coming down here to try to help out and collaborate with all the music.

And I love how it's created this, like, tiny horn section of it's, you know, it's not a 13 piece big band, big band thing, but it's, it still feels really nice to have that kind of brass effect, especially with like, the jazz rock elements.

I think it really adds to that.

Let's talk about the show, 11 unreleased songs.

So.

So tell us about why this is important, what you're doing on the studio.

Yeah.

I mean, this is, to us, this is the first of many steps to try to get our original music fully out there in the way that we're proud of.

Something that we can look at and be like, that's.

You know, that was a great time in our life.

So, why haven't you put the music and on Spotify and all the streaming services and platforms and all that we had going good.

So sorry.

We had a little demo that we had recorded and released, but ultimately, it's kind of like I mentioned earlier of you don't necessarily know when a song's done.

And we thought these songs were somewhat done.

We went in and recorded them, and when we got everything back, we were like, this just isn't right.

Like the the entire image of the song and the grand picture of it just was not there.

It wasn't communicating.

So we were just really unhappy with the initial, our first release.

So we've taken our time to try to make sure that our next releases are going to be really tight, really succinct, and exactly what we want to be putting out there.

So our next big plan is coming November.

We're going to be going to Oregon and recording for like 9 or 10 days straight.

And, yeah, that's going to be our first long studio session where we can really sit in, put the work in, and by the time we all leave, we should be able to be like, yeah, pretty good.

So let's say that this time that, in Oregon of 2025 or something, they say something for sure.

Okay.

Got you.

Yeah.

This coming November, 2025, we're going to be going in the studio for like, 9 or 10 days straight with a good close friend of ours who used to play in the band.

Chef Justin, chef out in Oregon.

He's got a great studio out there.

We'll be doing a long stint of just focusing on music every single day, getting the greatest takes we can get, getting everything processed the best way we can get it.

And that's I'm fairly excited.

It's the first time that we'll be able to go in and spend day after day after day working on it.

So how do you keep this band moving forward?

I guess you're probably the one that has the most, I don't know what's the best way to say it.

Did.

Did you form the band or did.

Okay, so.

So you, you formed a band.

How do you keep it moving?

How do you keep it going forward?

The important thing is making sure our calendar stays booked so that everyone's incentivized to want to keep working and keep, creating stuff.

One of the things that I think hindered our process was trying to find people that are that want to be in it for the whole journey.

Because recording music and performing music, and especially on the original side, is not very lucrative off the rip.

You're going to have to really spend some hours before you feel like you're getting any money back whatsoever.

So it's a huge investment of time, resources and money.

And it takes, certain people that really believe in what the music is and what it's trying to accomplish that are down for that amount of work.

I'm Robbie Painter.

I'm the singer songwriter for about to sweat.

We are recording.

Can I get one big clap right from your face?

Perfect.

Thanks.

Perfect.

He knows the stuff.

None of these three things.

Our ability more clap real quick.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Got to get.