Maxi on civic media. We are local music. Some good rock and roll right there from luxury
problems in from Madison. So long as it's called sleepwalkers. Hey, I want to remind you
if you haven't got the civic media app yet, you should probably do that. There's a lot
of great content on there. Listen to your favorite civic media station right from your phone.
Just go to civicmedia.us or find it at your favorite app store, Terry.
Yeah. Wow. Sleepwalkers from luxury problems. You know, this band is new as far as being
together playing. You can probably tell these are some experienced musicians though. Let
me introduce you to them. Joining us welcome the members of luxury problems. Ben Glass
is on vocals and keys. He is not able to be here tonight, but obviously you could hear
him singing right there.
Ian Smith brought on guitar. Whoa. And then Randy Roberts on drums. You guys, okay, you're
based in the Madison area. What brought you together to form a new band and didn't go ahead
either one of you? It was actually mostly Ben. Ben's in another band called Future Trash,
which is a band that I've enjoyed for a while. I didn't know that he was still in the
area and he just kind of hit me up one day and asked me if we wanted to start working
on some music with a few other people that ended up not being a part of this project.
But we got Randy on board and just started writing music right away. So it went really
quick. It was one of those things where it was kind of just natural when you all got
together and put instruments in your hands and start a plane. Yeah, absolutely. You know,
Ian and I have been playing in bands together for the last couple of years. So it's kind
of just an easy choice when they told me they were looking for a drummer and, you know,
just kind of went from there. Wow. You guys are good together too. Can each of you share
maybe a little of your backstory and why music? How'd you get started in music? And why
don't you start? Sure. Yeah. I started playing guitar when I was in middle school, high school.
I'm the oldest member of the band. So I was, I got into stuff when like corn was becoming
popular and stuff like that. And that was what started it. And shortly after that,
I heard a band called the Dillinger Escape Plan, which I don't know if anybody's familiar
with those guys, but they are beyond insane when it comes to their music and how they
compose. And that kind of just opened a whole new avenue for me. And ever since then,
it's just been kind of chasing that feeling that you get when you listen to that kind
of music. That's awesome. And Randy, the drum, I always call the drum kind of the heartbeat
of the band. And your style of music though is not easy. No, not at all. You know, I've
been playing drums for almost 20 years at this point. You know, I got into it learning
from my dad. My dad's been a drummer in metal bands and cover bands, you know, locally,
locally. Oh, what bands is he in? So he used to be in John Macino band. Okay. Currently
he's not playing any bands. But he's still drumming every day. He needs to get it back
out there. He does. He needs him out there. Dad, if you're listening. Yes, dad. Yeah.
You ever jam with your dad or dollar? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's how I got started
playing. You know, I didn't do percussion in school or anything. I just started learning
with my dad. He bought me my first drum set when I was 12, 13. And I'd never stopped
from there. That's so cool. And now, of course, you're working on releasing this new music
that you guys have been working on together as luxury problems. How would you say you,
and it sounds like it's happening fast. How do you develop a writing partnership? And
where does the music fit in? And I guess what comes first? The music or the words or whatever?
It's mostly music first. Ben is also a guitar player. And he does a lot of programming
on the computer and stuff. We're all pretty technologically literate. So a lot of times
one of us will come up with an idea and we'll just put it into our dawn, the computer and
send it off to the rest of them. And like Randy can program his own drums for demo purposes.
So we won't have to worry about like, I'll be in in the same room to get anything accomplished.
And with G Drive and Reaper, we've been able to like just collaborate without having to be
necessarily in the same room. Isn't that why? And then we do have band practice once a week. So
when we get together for practice, we're already coming in with half finished ideas or things
that people have already had a chance to kind of sit with and gel with and think about what they
want to do next or how they want to handle it. So it's pretty quick process. This is honestly
the fastest I've ever been able to write music with the with the group. This is my fourth band
that I've been a part of. And usually it's kind of especially with the more technical stuff.
It's kind of laborious to learn the parts and discuss the how things are going to work out.
And this one is just been like, yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. No, I don't like that.
Don't do that. That's awesome. And then we have a song done in a couple of days or a couple of
weeks, depending on how long we can spend on it. Jimmy K had a question. Randy and Ian from
Luxury Problems. Actually, two questions. I guess the name of the band is it's fun to say Luxury
Problems. It's like third world problems or something like that. Would you kind of poke
funny yourself for complaining about something? Talk about the band name.
Um, that's another. That's another feel. It's kind of terrible that Ben's not here because he's
been he's kind of like what brought everything together years are ringing right now. Yeah, yeah.
And he was also, he came up with the band name when we were just kind of, um, we, uh,
start, we had like three songs written and we didn't have a band name. So we're like,
well, we should probably figure something out. And one day we, uh, we chat via Facebook
Messenger quite a bit. And, um, mostly it's nonsense, but every once in a while we get some work done.
And we just kind of started throwing stuff out there. And that was the one that we kept coming back to.
And Ben kind of went a little crazy with it and did some graphics that like featured it on like
a fake album cover and stuff like that. So that really sold it for me anyways that it looked
cool when it was in print. Then it meant it's real, right? Yeah, exactly. I wish Ben was here too,
because this, this, this be a perfect question. But maybe one of you can answer it as far as your
song writing topics that you're, that you're singing about. And, uh, what, what's like one of the
biggest topics that looks really problems songs are about. Uh, kind of going off the,
the band name luxury problems, you know, a lot of it is about the, the problems with,
you know, modern society and things like that. Um, just calling out a lot of the
issues, uh, yeah, issues, I guess, yeah, right now that are out there. Is it kind of political or,
sort of, um, not really it's more just about, you know, navigating, uh, yourself through modern
society. Yeah, that can be difficult. I mean, at the end of the day, everything's political,
right? Yeah. But that doesn't really the intent. I think what Randy said is it's mostly about like
we all have to interact with this machine that we all live in. And sometimes it feels more like
your fuel and sometimes it feels more like you're the machine. And that's kind of where a lot of
the topics for most of the lyrics have come from so far. And, and your fans, I mean, you're,
you're just new again. You've got some shows coming up. Um, what do you want them to get from
your songs? Do you want them to be out there? Just jamming in the mosh band or like do you hopefully
also listen to the words and get something from it? I think when it comes to recorded stuff,
we want people to pay attention to what we're talking about. Yeah. But if they've never heard of
us before and haven't heard the music and they're just coming to see us live, all we really want is
we want to give them enough energy that they feel like they want to give something back to us.
And that's like my favorite part of playing live is you go out there and you leave it out there
and you're hoping that they're going to give you something to take with you when you're done, you know.
Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, when you're on stage and you see someone walking over to your
merch booth, that has to be really proud. He makes me proud, you know. You guys are a DIY band too.
You're doing everything yourself. Talk about doing running a band by yourself and not having
like a band manager or a public publicist or anything like that. Definitely not easy these days.
You know, it takes a lot to be in a band nowadays. You have to be very active when it comes to
social media, putting out content all the time. That's something we're definitely trying to get
better at. None of us are very good when it comes to social media. So we're always passing ideas
back and forth to each other. But yeah, it's very difficult nowadays to stay relevant, especially
in this type of music. And you're saving the money too because you're doing your own production,
your mixing, your mastering and all that too, right? Yep. That's one of the hardest parts about
doing it DIY is you have to be social media manager. You have to be the producer. You have to be
the engineer. You have to be, you know, the person who manages your streaming and all that stuff.
And if you're trying to also be the one who, you know, manages the recordings, manages the
mixing, does all that other stuff, it becomes like, you know, that's four or five people's jobs.
Yeah. And we're trying to do it in the, you know, 16 hours that we have a day that we don't have to
do our normal jobs to afford to live in. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, you know, I'm getting a lot
of money doing math core breakdowns. So unfortunately, who is the engineer? That is me. I, uh, yeah. Okay.
Yeah. I, um, I've been, I went to school for it back in the early 2000. So I have a, I have a
background in audio engineering and, um, been trying to get back into it. I've worked with a few
other local bands, um, recently doing some mastering and mixing. Awesome. Um, so I'm trying to get back
into it, but mostly I just got into it because I wanted to do it for myself. And that's what I've
been doing with it for since I got out of school for the most part. Do you guys have a website?
I mean, you talked about social media. And again, we're talking with luxury problems. Uh, we've got
Ian and Randy in here, but you have a website or where would you drive people to learn more about
you? Uh, we do not have a website. We are on pretty much every social media platform. So Instagram,
Facebook, uh, you can find all of our music on Apple music, Spotify, everything like that,
Bandcamp. Excellent. Uh, Jimmy K, I think we're about to hear the brand new song. Yes. How about it?
Tell us about, uh, what is it? Uh, Symptoms favorite sophisticated? No, sicko, psycho fan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't even get it right. Psycho fan. This is it. I know
somewhere we saw it was SFS. Yes. Okay. So we'll go with that. Tell us about the song. Uh, this
was one of the earlier songs that we wrote. Yeah. First song. Oh, wow. Um, this one, you know,
has always been kind of a favorite for us. It's a little bit more of a mainstream vibe to it.
You can bob your head to it a little bit more. It's not quite so jarring. So I hope you guys
enjoy it. What is what is the song about? Which can you tell us what we should be listening for? Um,
it's pretty much on the same topic as sleepwalkers. The first two songs we put together very much
have the same kind of underlying vibe to them, even though they're very different musically.
Um, this one is definitely like, uh, feeling like you have to monetize every moment of your day.
Otherwise, you're not being successful. Um, which is something that we all kind of deal with.
I imagine being in media that you kind of feel like you have to be, you're on all the time,
you know, and not on and it gets to be a lot. So that's the, that's the subject of the song for
them. And real quick, this song has never been heard anywhere else before, but you do have a
release celebration coming up. Where when tell us all that? Um, I guess technically that would be
next Saturday at the crucible on the east side of Madison. We're playing, uh, the first annual
colchella, which is our friend Brian or Brian Cole is putting together that show. And I think
there's 12 bands. Yeah, it's um, but it is some of the best hardcore math core metal core bands
in the Midwest. They're coming all the way from, I believe, uh, Pittsburgh is the furthest
traveling band. And then, um, our good friends in the central are also playing. So it's, uh,
it's going to be quite the thing. Awesome. The central is good. Yeah, they're like them a lot. Yeah.
Ian Randi is both, it's great to see you both again. Congratulations on, uh, luxury problems.
Give Ben a hug for us and of course, appreciate y'all coming in. As you have the brand new song right now
as luxury problems is maxing on civic media. We are local music.