The band Red is about to launch their energetic new album – ‘Declaration’. This ten track boss definitely delivers the goods. The vocals soar. The drums are strong. And those guitars.. They go low and tease the listeners brain when combined with the enormous bottom end of the bass guitar. The mix will not disappoint any fan of the band. This is what we came for. The band is also releasing the record in modern fashion. This time around they are releasing this on their own and have a plan in place that will likely see the band releasing new music for years to come. As with many of the interviews I conduct, I try to go into detail about the production and recording aspects of a record. This was no exception but we went pretty deep on the mechanics of releasing an album, with and without a label. I will say, it’s not as easy as some people think. There’s many sleepless nights to be had when one enters such an endeavor.
I spoke with guitarist Anthony Armstrong and he gave us the low down on the new album, how it came to fruition and how they are going about releasing it. Anthony tells Sound Vapors, “We weren’t planning on releasing a record. When we finished our record deal, we were with our record label twelve years. We did six records with the label and we didn’t resign. We decided to go independent. We have such an amazing fan base. A lot of what we’ve learned about the music industry has helped us to make that decision. But we weren’t ready to release an entire record. There were some things happening in the industry that we learned about. One of those things is called “cascading”, which means a band just releases content, pretty regularly. Every month you release a new song. So you just keep feeding the fire instead of throwing that big log on every two years, letting it burn hot for a while and then it just kind of disappears. So just keep stroking the fire and release six songs. That was our goal. We went into the studio with enough money to make three tracks and that was the first part of all of this.”
Anthony explains that they went into the studio and recorded those songs and put them on an E.P. and explains how they got to a full length album. He says, “Our fans heard the first initial tracks and they were freaking out and we started getting the comments, when’s the record?? We said, You know what? Maybe this cascading thing may not be a good idea. Some people want as much content as possible. So we either keep releasing songs or we just put together a record. When we decided to make the record and we announced, Hey, we’re putting a full record together for you guys. We’re talking about an early Spring release. Fans were loving it. Being our first independent effort, we were obviously super concerned about making it great and having the money to do it. Now the label is gone, it’s a scary thing for us because that money was given to us by the label to make every record. The fans, when they buy the music, pay that money back. Pay that debt back to the label that we owe.”
Anthony then explains how the band is now in a position where they are virtually wearing all of those hats. Anthony explains, “Basically it’s the exact same thing that is happening right now. We did a Go Fund Me, basically turning our fans into the record label, more or less. They supported us with whatever monetary amount they could and put the faith in us to make a great record and we raised the money. We were pretty pumped and hopeful that we could do it. We did it and went into the studio and finished the record and made the announcement that it’ll be coming out in April. So we decided to still cascade, now that we’ve got enough of the songs to keep feeding them. 
Let’s just give them a song, we’ll do one song a month. The last one we released was The War We Made, which is going to be our single. We gave them five tracks plus all of the E.P. acoustic stuff, just to hold them over until the record comes out. One thing that is for sure is because of the support that we got to make the record, the revenue that comes in from the streaming and the purchase of the record, will pay for the next one. So we’ll be able to do it again. We only had to ask for the money once because we started out own record label from the very ground up.”
In addition to being a group of highly talented musicians, these guys are about as sharp as they come. It isn’t an easy road but they decided to take it and I can’t wait to see how their journey unfolds. Heck, we may even see them one day jump starting another band. They seem to have the blueprint. One thing Anthony says that should’t be understated: You can’t do this with out an amazing fan base. This model is not about gouging fans, this was about having just enough to record the record. With so many of the other costs involved, i.e. radio promo, distribution, public relations, etc., the band probably could’ve used more to finish the project. But that’s not how these guys roll. Anthony says, “The one factor in all of this that matters most – is the fans.” You’d better believe it.
The portion of our chat we covered just then is only the tip of the iceberg. He shares many more things involved with the album and we even get into a little Sevendust chat! You can never have too much of that. You can hear my entire conversation with Anthony Armstrong by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or by watching the video version on YouTube.
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