Issue 16: Connor of Goodie Bag
Welcome to The Band Bible! I’m truly glad to have you here. If you’re a new reader, purpose of this newsletter is to address, break down, and shine a light on the business of being in a band. Each issue, we do this by interviewing (and celebrating!) someone who is making waves through their incredible work with or for independent artists. Learning the business of being in a band is something that is often inaccessible or shrouded in mystery, and it shouldn’t be, so I hope The Band Bible is able to play even a small role in helping to change that.
This month’s issue of The Band Bible is, for the second time ever, focused on a band. Our interviewee is Connor, who undertakes vocals, songwriting, and production in the band Goodie Bag. Alongside longtime friends and bandmates Charlie and Riley, the trio began creating music together during their time as university students in Nashville. While Goodie Bag was still in the thick of their studies in 2019, they self-released a single called "Strawberry Shortcake." Despite not having any form of representation or professional assistance, the song went viral. "Strawberry Shortcake" was and continues to be added to scores of playlist, including those curated by Spotify, won media praise, and allowed the band's platform to experience initial growth to the extent where they were able to perform in several different cities across the United States. The sudden onset of success meant that the band was faced with needing to adjust to the reality that what had previously been a hobby had now evolved into a small business.
The following years saw Goodie Bag make an exciting departure from the bedroom pop sound they had become most known for since the release of "Strawberry Shortcake," allowing Connor, Charlie, and Riley to take a more multifaceted approach to their creative work by wearing more hats than ever before. Shifting their sound to become more electronic, they are able to sing, produce, engineer, and play multiple instruments. This demonstrates the extent to which they have evolved the Goodie Bag sound to incorporate greater levels of richness and sophistication, and their fans have loyally grown with them.
In celebration of the band's new single "Wish," which is off their forthcoming debut album Chrome Angels, Connor reflects upon how the band has grown to make business decisions as their platform grew, what it's like to undergo a genre shift when you already have a following, what can be expected from Chrome Angels, and shares the biggest piece of advice he'd offer to other bands.
Overall, how do you approach business decisions as a band?
We always take stock of our finances and weigh if the possible outcomes are worth it financially and professionally
Your track “Strawberry Shortcake” gained a significant amount of traction in a short timeframe. How did having a song blow up change how you operated the band from a business perspective?
It gave us a steady stream of money coming in each month that we didn’t have before. This allowed us to actually have a reliable budget for future releases and not just rely on scraping our own money together. Thus, we could now afford to commission the cover art that we wanted, visuals, run ads, and more — all just from the money from one song.
Goodie Bag successfully survived a genre shift. How did you manage that change administratively, and it bring about any worries?
The genre shift was a natural change as we grew as musicians. The worry nowadays lies in the algorithm. It has been a bit tougher since we switched genres because the internet and algorithms still label us by our old sound, and thus label our new music that way when the sound couldn’t be any further from that. Hopefully as we continue to release new music we can shift the algorithm to recognize that we aren’t a bland bedroom pop act anymore.
What can you share about Chrome Angels at this point?
It was fun to make. We got to explore sounds, concepts, and ideas that we hadn’t gotten to explore before. It combines lots of influences into something new.
Lastly, which “commandment” would you like to leave behind in The Band Bible?
You can’t expect to post about a song on social media the day it releases and actually expect people outside of your core fans to listen to it. I’ve seen many people get disappointed when a song initially doesn’t perform as anticipated, though they did absolutely nothing to promote it besides posting on social media the day it comes out. Obviously you need to post about it, but you need to be promoting it in other ways too. It’s like lighting a single match and expecting it to start a forest fire.
Thank you to Connor for taking the time to give such thoughtful answers. To keep up with Goodie Bag, click here to follow them on Instagram, here to follow them on Twitter, and here to follow them on Facebook. Connor also makes music under the moniker Fairy Dust.