When I think Wisconsin and Lords of the Trident, I think cheese curds (fried of course), grandma’s hotdish, and the most metal band on Earth. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with LOTT front man, Ty Christian, to talk about all things LOTT. Sit back, enjoy, and read / watch / learn about LOTT, their history, their stories, their business model and the upcoming adventures!!
Digital Beat Magazine (DBM)
Well, first of all, how long have you guys (Lords of the Trident) been around and tell us a little bit about how you evolved.
TY (Lords of the Trident)
Yeah, we’ve been a band for 15 years now going on 16. So yeah, essentially the band started out originally with little recording projects that wasn’t really even a recording project. It was more of like a fun thing to do in the dorms and back then I was not into metal at all. I was in another band, alternative, kind of like alternative rock and funk, almost like a Pearl Jam. Red Hot Chili Peppers, kind of a band. The band, the band that I was in, the alternative rock band was breaking up because it was nearing the end of college and everybody kind of going their separate ways. As that was happening, we decided to do Lords of the Trident as a fun little one off thing for the summer, do a couple of shows and that’s it… Catch the rest of the answer below…
DBM
You just said you came off your you’ve done a European Tour, which was pretty impressive. And now a Japan tour now. I understand that you are moderately fluent in Japanese, is that correct?
TY (LOTT)
Yeah, it depends on who you ask. If you ask if I am fluent in Japanese to you, yes, to a Japanese person, maybe not. I do have a degree in Japanese from UW (Madison), so I at least have some form of pedigree in it, but I I haven’t actively spoken Japanese in probably like 10 years. Luckily when I got there, to Japan, it was sort of like riding a bike. It just kind of all came back to me really fast. So yeah, it was really cool and Japan is definitely one of those cultures and places that if you make any attempt to speak their language everybody like, oh, my God. Oh my God. So me, you know, doing the between song banter in Japanese every night turned a lot of heads. And I had a few jokes that really landed every night and I. Was like, yeah, hell yeah.
DBM
Before I got to know you, you actually did kind of an East Coast tour, a little bit in North Carolina, maybe South Carolina. Is that true?
TY (LOTT)
Yep, we’ve primarily gone east just because, and I think you know, for anybody who is who is out of the Midwest, especially, bands or anybody who tours out of the Midwest… if you take a take a map of the United States and you draw a line down the middle and then you look at population density, East and West, it makes it pretty clear what direction is the easiest to go. Now we are heading on a West Coast tour pretty soon and that brings a number of challenges, including drive time and just just general mileage. When we go on East Coast tours we can drive for 3-4 hours and be in a very different population dense area. You can go from Madison to Chicago and Chicago to Detroit and Detroit to Fort Wayne and all that sort of different places. When we’re going. West, it takes 7-8 hours to go from like Kansas City to Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, to Los Angeles. Those things can definitely make a tour more expensive and more tedious. I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve mostly focused on going East for the for the most part.
DBM
Do you have any stories to tell? Either nightmare stories or just absolute wonderful stories that you’d like to? Share and you. Can take tell as many as you want, but one of each at least.
TY (LOTT)
Oh, my God. Yeah, I have. I have a a million. I think anybody who’s in a band who does any amount of touring has a million billion stories. One of the ones that immediately comes to mind is actually from our European tour. We got we got connected with this guy out of Europe, who’s a very, very, very nice individual and a fabulous human being. And he ran a small record company. He was starting up a small record company and one of our friend’s bands from North Carolina made the connection because he, out of the blue, contacted them on Facebook and he’s like, ‘I love your band when you’re coming to Germany. I’d love to see you in Germany’. They were like ‘haha, right!’ Right. He’s like, ‘no really. I can set you up with the whole tour, it would be great. You know, I get a bus and everything’. They were like, ‘Wait, really?’ So they went over and they had a a wonderful time with them. Played a huge festival, and made a ton of money.
I was like, does he like Lords of the Trident and he’s like, oh, yeah, they he can’t stop talking about you guys. I’m like, well, just give him my e-mail! Like what are you doing?
So we started going back and forth on doing this tour and the guys in in Mega Colossus down in North Carolina are probably my favorite band, personally, to tour with and to play with and to just. You know, I’m. I’m a big fan of their music, so I just love hanging around them and hearing them play live and we’ve known each other for a long time and they said to me when the tour started to come into fruition they, they said “Now Ty, I know you love your spreadsheets and I know you like to have everything planned six months, eight months in advance, but just FYI, Europe doesn’t really work that way… Click the video link below for the rest of the answer…
DBM
You said Patreon saved you. You’ve got a very interesting business model, and that was one of the things that I noticed right away. Going to YouTube and everything else. You have self help band videos and things of that nature which I’m assuming were part of the Patreon ideology and what have you.
TY (LOTT)
Yep, exactly.
DBM
So can you tell us a little bit about your business model?
TY (LOTT)
I did a lot of investigation when Lords were coming on the scene. I wanted to make the band successful and so I did a lot of research. I read a lot, thinking about different aspects of the music industry. It’s one of the things that I actually really enjoy just learning about the music industry in general. I learned a lot of stuff the hard way through mistakes and eventually what we what we settled on.
I should preface this with we’re in a weird moment in history with music. Previously the standard thing to do would be to play a lot of shows, get the attention of an A&R representative from a major label, hopefully get signed, put out an album, go into debt, go on tour, and then hope that the label likes you and that you’re making enough money to make the next record and to go out on tour again to do that sort of thing.
Nowadays… Listen to what Ty says below about the business model (one of the most successful bands on Patreon), and the industry in general…
DBM
Are there any events that you would like to share with our readers that may be upcoming? You know what does the future hold? Maybe in August of this year or something?
TY (LOTT)
There are two main main events coming up this year that I’m excited about. The first one is a Southwest tour. It is southwest and West Coast tour coming up in April where we’re going down into Albuquerque and Arizona and California and we’re going all the way up the West Coast, all the way up to Vancouver to play the Hyperspace Festival. That’s coming up in this first week and second week of April. We’ve got details of where the shows are going to be at on our website, lordsthetriden.com. So you can check that out. And if you’re in any of the areas listed, we’d love to have you come out and see the show. And so yeah, we’re excited for that. Hopefully we survive the tour, driving through the desert and all that sort of stuff. I’m sure we’ll come back with a million more stories from that as well.
The other big thing we’ve got coming up this year and every year is Mad With Power Fest. We put on an arcade, pinball and heavy metal festival the third weekend of August every single year. We’ve sold it out pretty consistently for the last threeish years. This year is kind of our make or break year. We’re moving to a a venue that is five times the size of the last venue that we’ve had the festival in previously… Find out more about Mad With Power’s new look and the upcoming tour – click the video below!!
DBM
Do you have anything else that you’d like to share?
TY (LOTT)
I think I’m good.
DBM
OK. Oh, you guys are awesome. And keep up what you’re doing.
TY (LOTT)
Sounds great. Thanks for the time.
DBM
OK. Yeah. Thanks. Ty you too. Bye.
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