Different Worlds One Killer Sound - Wake the Nile

From Different Worlds - One Killer Sound. 

[Intro]

Coming up, Wake the Nile a new band from Austin, Texas. Don, straight out of Uganda, and Dominic, Tampa Bay kid, two strangers who crashed into each other in Austin last August. Different coasts, different routes, same fire.

They bonded over late-night jams, swapped stories from Halfway, Round the Globe, and bam, started building something raw and real. No hype, no big labels yet, just pure chemistry and killer tunes. Their debut album drops this year.

Trust me, this is the kind of band that sneaks up on you, then sticks. Wake the Nile. Watch Em wake up the world.

Now here's The Trout with Dominic and Don, enjoy.

[The Trout]

Tell me about how you guys got together. That's the first thing I need to know.

[Wake the Nile]

Okay. All right. The origin, and then we'll get to the name, too.

[The Trout]

First, how long have you known each other, and how long has this project been going on?

[Wake the Nile]

All right. We've known each other for like six, seven years now, 2019. Probably seven years.

We met through mutual friend. I think it was after a show I did when I was playing with another band, and we had an after hangout over at our buddy's apartment. I believe that was the same night, I'm not sure.

But we were all hanging out, and a mutual friend came over and had his phone. He brought Don over and said, you've got to meet my buddy Don. He makes music, you've got to check out his tunes, and stuff like that.

And we're like, all right. It's kind of loud at the party. And so we kind of like huddle into the kitchen, and I grabbed the phone from him, and I listened to this demo, and I was like, oh, okay.

All right. This is fantastic. Are you playing in a band?

He said, no, that's me. And I said, well, no, this is a whole band. I'm doing all of that.

This is a demo from work that I've put together myself. And I was like, okay. I start to see that there's obviously some, you know, my interest has peaked, I guess you can say.

And then we started hanging out more, because we were friends with mutual friends, just hadn't quite met until that night. And from there, tried to kind of do some stuff together musically, kind of like a new project. Or at the time, we had some people moving out of the project I was in, and we're like, maybe we can fuse those two together, bring you in and use a little bit of your music and a little bit of ours and kind of fuse that together.

And that kind of fizzled out. And then, fast forward a couple years, I joined a different band, and that band had a good run from a single that they had put out. And I put them on tour a lot.

And we were touring a bunch. And after that, like, you know, year and a half, two years, I had come back. And when I kind of decided to part ways with that group, I reconnected with Don.

And I said, Hey, you know, I met this guy in the studio. His name is Matt. You know, we did a single there with the old band under the rug.

And he's asking about if I'm interested in doing anything else, if I've got anything lined up in the pipework. I showed him your demo that you sent to me a long time ago, and he loved it. He wants you to come in and chat about us two and potentially putting together a record at his studio.

So let me ask you a quick question.

[The Trout]

What was the demo? What was the song?

[Wake the Nile]

Lamb. Okay.

[The Trout]

I figured that'd be one that you guys worked on.

[Wake the Nile]

Oh, no. So, kind of. I mean, Don wrote the song, right?

He wrote the song, brought it to me, and then we added in some textural parts. I think Lamb didn't really have a whole lot of my influence on it.

[Intro]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's also important context to mention that that whole time while Don was on tour with the project he was with before, and even, you know, prior to that, when we were trying to fish around to see if there's a mesh with the project that he was in prior to that one, I was just sitting on those demos, just waiting for a good enough artist to come along and like, you know, take that journey with me, because I was very set on the idea that this music is going to work better in the hands of more experienced, you know, instrumentalists.

You know, I'm very low to call myself a multi instrumentalist. I just did the best that I could with the demo. My forte is playing the drums.

That's where I grew up playing. And I picked up guitar and keys over the years. But ultimately, I just knew that I can sketch something out, and then put it in the hands of a better bass player, a better guitar player.

And it will come to life in a sense. And so I was just, you know, waiting for those people to come along. And that's that's what LAMP ended up becoming.

It's a collective of local Austin artists who put their personal touch on it. And so it's not night and day from the demo.

[The Trout]

But you know, if you compare them, it's like, it's, it's, it's like me sitting here and recording on my phone and then taking it which I've done and take it to the studio and go, it's the same song, but it's not the same song. It's like that. And the demo was fantastic.

Don't let it take away. So it started several years ago as you guys got together. And so Dom, do you play you?

So what is you got you play? Who plays what? I mean, I've seen the videos.

I see the videos. One of you obviously somebody's playing guitar and you're playing drums, but yeah, I know what you guys are recording. There's other people or you're doing the stuff yourself.

[Wake the Nile]

Well, that's what I that's the funny part when he was talking about, you know, wanting to find other artists that, you know, could help supplement the thing. And at the time, you know, he was playing drums the most and then and then, you know, learning and getting through the guitar and the keys and stuff like I was going to say, and then he found another drummer. But to be honest with you, even if we had, in my opinion, if we had started when we had started, I don't think we would be where we are today.

I think that there was a whole mess of stuff we both needed to learn about, not just the music aspect of it, not just the instrumentation, but the back end and and being able to make things that catch people's attention like yourself out of the blue, you know, and there was a lot more that was involved with that process that if we had just jumped into it and just started playing the songs, we wouldn't have had the studio connection we wouldn't. So the time apart that we spent for those two and a half years or so and then coming back together and be like, Hey, I just went and did a bunch of stuff.

And he's like, Hey, I've been doing a bunch of stuff. Now let's try it. And I think that that that timeframe really helped.

And so I mean, we've been it's been about two years now since we started. But we've only been public for August, September tournaments, seven months.

[Intro]

But so to the question of who plays what? Oh, yeah, Dom carries most of the rhythm stuff. So like Dom is obviously like he's got drum chops off the butt.

And, you know, that's that's kind of I feel like where he's comfortable the most. And then I given my druthers given my like, in a perfect world, I'll just have a mic in my hand. But, you know, I also recognize that, like, you know, we're a project that is not like to the point where we have the resources to, you know, get a lineup of eight people on stage with us.

And so, you know, where I need it, I'll carry the rhythm section, and I'll do a little lead guitar here and there. And, you know, we'll switch around and sometimes Dom will carry keys and, and so but the ideal version of Wake Denial. Dom is on drums.

I'm up front with the microphone. And then we have a cast of guitarists. A rhythm, a lead, a bass, a keys, a percussion, and maybe some backup vocals.

[The Trout]

Don, you're the one that's in the videos with the guitar, aren't you?

[Intro]

Yes.

[The Trout]

Yeah. OK. And he's playing it in the track.

[Intro]

And I understand.

[The Trout]

Look, I'm a guitar player. I can tell when people are playing or not. I'd say here's what I thought was funny.

And I'm going to tell you something that I thought was kind of cute to me. So you're you're doing a video. You're on top of a building and then, Don, you're standing down below.

OK. And obviously you're listening to track and playing. You, Don, are looking to see how you're going to where their fingers go on the chords that you're really not playing.

They cracked me up. I'm going here. Nobody else would have picked that up.

But I thought it was funny because I'm like, he's looking to see it. I'm going like he ain't playing nothing. Of course, nobody knows that.

And I thought there's somebody really concerned about what they do. But here's what caught my eye. And I would tell you this.

And I said, I've I've been doing this a long time. I've interviewed a lot of people. And here's what I already know about you guys already.

Your songwriting is great. You have good you have good songwriting skills. You know how to put a song together.

You know how to record it. Your videos are really cool. They're interesting.

They're not your normal, you know, you guys are probably not as old. But I mean, in the 80s, when MTV was on, we watched videos of people. We never did understand what they made and meant.

They just come out and do stuff. And you're like you're like, what does this mean? Well, I don't know.

We just want to make a video. But your videos are clever. But what what's not bad.

But the thing that's interesting to me is. You're just starting out and you already have the patience to not get too far ahead, as they say, over your skis too fast. Yes.

All right. So let's go back to August of last year and you come together. What was that?

How many times did you record it first? Just the one or two? Did you say that you want to start putting out?

We tracked them.

[Wake the Nile]

We tracked Lamb and Champion separately. And those were just about right at the finish line by the time we began Mercy and then the rest of the album. There's nine songs.

And so the next six or seven we did in a one day of tracking and then or two days of tracking and punches and edits and stuff. And then throughout that, we we had Lamb finished Champion, I think, real close and Mercy right on the back door. And that's when we knew, come August, we were like, when we get the three singles completely tied up and we start shooting the video content and then we obviously align the audio and the content together, we could be done and out the door with the first video, the first introduction, the first photograph by August.

And this decision was made in roughly May. I think somewhere around May, we said, we have like a compounding list of things that need to get done before we can begin. And then everything after that, it was like a release roadmap.

Basically, we plan to make sure that everything you know, okay, this week, we drop this video next week, we're ready with the next one. So everything was kind of ready to go before with the jump off in August. Sorry.

[Intro]

That's a burst too much from the question. But I do want to go back to your comment about the videos and the content. I mean, like a whole lot, because the ideas themselves are very intentional.

And I'm glad that's coming across. It means a lot coming from someone like you, who obviously is paying attention to what is happening in the video, like you picked up on the fact that, you know, I'm playing a guitar that's not actually coming through the audio of the video. Like I'm looking down to make sure that I'm actually holding the right chord down.

But the stories we're trying to tell are we into the videos as well. And it's a very, it's a fun balance right now in a world where like some of the the things that push you up to people's feeds are very, like, formulaic, you know, if you check these boxes off, then you're likely to end up on a feed. But it's a fun balance between, you know, just doing what gets you virality and what you actually want to do in terms of like your artistic expression.

And so to say that, to tell us that that's coming across in terms of like the message and like the, you know, the cool factor and the interesting factor of the videos like that, that means a whole lot. So I really appreciate you pointing that out.

[The Trout]

Well, you need to know that when you're going out and doing your thing, and it doesn't matter if you're doing the first song or you're doing 100, it's you still want to know that it's the message is getting out. And to me, when I look at you guys, I think the thing that you have the advantage of, and we'll talk about what you do for, you know, what you did or what your day jobs are, or whatever you really do until you get this going or whatever. But you're not, you're not 18.

You both got some little miles on you. So you know how the world works. You know, you already know how things are together.

You've all been in music before, you know, how it's like my when my last band broke up, my wife says, Are you going to start another one? I go, Well, why did they break up? I said, I was in a band.

[Intro]

That's just what they do.

[The Trout]

That's what they do. But I think you're clever songwriting and the videos. You're fortunate enough to have the ability, whether financially or you have friends, like the babes in the video that come in, or people that help you to give a quality video and a quality soundtrack that can be used anywhere.

And that's important in today's world, because I forgot I saw how many is like 100,000 songs a day, or some stupid amount of people drop songs every single day. I think it's 60,000 Spotify. Yeah, yeah, it's just stupid.

So you got you got to get through that part. But the other thing is, because I noticed this, because I started looking at your socials, and I'm going like, these guys aren't out there killing it trying to like, Hey, look, we had breakfast this morning. Or Hey, here I am playing this or Hey, I'm doing this.

And your videos are not getting the feed that you want. But they will because I think the patience comes in to do it. The other thing I want to say too, is you're in a process now that Americans are music lovers don't have a problem with and that is playing tracks while you're performing live.

I mean, it's you live in Austin, you probably already know this, you guys could come out and do your bits and have tracks and people would not get crazy. They don't know where's the band, they don't care anymore. I don't think they care.

Yeah. So that that's advantage. But so when you started this, you put this this project together, what were your goals, your long term goals?

I mean, other than being successful, but how are you going to get where you want to go?

[Intro]

Well, for me, it's, I promise I'm not trying to sound corny here. But the ultimate message of the songs is what I want to put that into the world and make it reach as far as possible. Right.

And I'm trying to be subtle with it and not knock people over the head with this idea that, you know, within you is like a wellspring of ability and inspiration and creativity. And you just have to tap into that and go deeper within yourself to find all the courage and ambition that you need to, you know, some out whatever challenges you perceive ahead of you. Right.

So that's the message that's woven within every single track. And just as a cheat for you, and all the listeners of your podcast, if you listen to our songs, if you're singing them to yourself, they begin to make a whole lot of sense. And so that's that's what I'm trying to put that message into the world.

And if so, what I'm an ultimate goal, like what's the, you know, best end state for Wicked Now is when, you know, we're playing internationally. Right. So we're playing to audiences that maybe not don't even speak English.

Right.

[The Trout]

Oh, yeah.

[Intro]

Right. Yeah. So I know that's obviously like on the surface for, you know, most people that say, oh, this guy just wants to get famous and be on an international tour.

And for me, that that would be like a secondary, you know, byproduct of our success. Success being that people actually resonate with the message of the song and they feel uplifted within it. So for me personally, that's that's the ultimate goal is to find the people who are seeking that inspiration and just remind them that, hey, by the way, you don't need to look outside.

It's all within. And just, you know, get that in as many heads and minds as possible. So tell me where you guys are from.

[Wake the Nile]

Where are you originally from? Where'd you grow up? I guess that'll essentially tie into the connection as well.

So we're from different parts of the world. I'm originally from Tampa, Florida.

[Intro]

OK. I was born in Uganda, Kampala, Uganda. So the capital.

[The Trout]

OK. Yeah. I heard the accent, but I couldn't figure out what it's from.

So and so how did you both end up in in Austin, Texas?

[Intro]

Well, for me, ending up in the in the U.S. at all was an academic endeavor. I came to the U.S. for college in twenty eleven. Longview, Texas.

Let's run a university for anyone who knows where that is. I did a four year course in commercial flight, initially commercial flight, then aircraft systems. But for me, the end goal was always music.

So, you know, whisper it. But, you know, it was really an exercise in appeasing my very traditionalist parents who just won't respect anyone if they're not a doctor or lawyer. But, you know, I always knew that, you know, I'd run back to music.

So after my four years of, you know, traditional academia, I was like, all right, shackle it off time and do my own thing. And, you know, I'm not in the aviation industry anymore. But as soon as I graduated, I started writing songs.

2016 was when I started working on the record and writing, you know, the actual lyrics of it. And then, you know, around twenty, twenty eighteen, I want to say, is when I moved to Austin because while I was in college, I visited Austin with a then girlfriend of mine and I just fell in love with the city. I always knew it.

It marketed itself as a life as the capital of the world. And when I visited at the time, I kind of got that feeling about it. You know, maybe that's dying now, but I did get the sense that if I was living in this city, that my prospects in the music world would be a lot more high.

[The Trout]

Yeah, I mean, it's like it's going, you know, it's good and bad. There's a lot of great players there. That's the bad news.

The good news is there's a lot of great players there that you can tap into. So how did you go from Tampa to Austin? I always say I'm a native Texan.

I'm from South Texas. So I always ask people the same thing. Was it love or money or both?

Oh, there you go.

[Wake the Nile]

Well, yeah, I reconnected with a girl. 2013, 2012 or something like that. And she was like, I'm living in Austin.

I was like, well, I'm still in Tampa. You should come visit sometime. And we did that.

And then next thing you know, we're both visiting each other because she still had friends and family from where we went to school from. So it started off that way. And then my mom kept pushing me to come to move to Austin.

So she had an office out here. Every time she came, she was like, it's way better for you. It's a way better city.

You know, you can, you know, Tampa at the time, and maybe not even now, was was big on live music. And I'd been around a lot of different places. And it was just original live music was not at the time in the early 2000s.

It was like the rise of electronic dubstep music and hip hop and things along that lines. And for a very cultural city like Tampa, just finding, you know, unique bands was one in a, you know, it was not as easy. So being, you know, in Austin, where I could walk out on my front door and throw a rock and hit, maybe even two guitarists, or, you know, you can hit them with the same rock, you know what I mean?

Like, I can, I can walk a mile one direction, I'm at a music venue, you know, it's, it's impossible to escape it here. And that's kind of helped to shape me as a person. But I mean, it started as a love interest, which turned into a career.

And I did, I was in telecommunications engineering, I did that for about 10 years. And eventually, left that to do music full time. And so that's where I'm at today.

But yeah, love money, both.

[The Trout]

Okay, we have a Uganda and a Floridian, Floridian. Yeah. End up, end up in Austin, which now when you mentioned Uganda, I'm thinking, okay, when you started talking, I thought, Nile River, West Wake, you know, I got started putting that together.

Yeah. And I thought, okay, am I off that much? Am I close to why that's the band name?

Very close.

[Intro]

Yeah, you're almost right on the money. You're like 50% there. Yeah.

[The Trout]

Well, you know, it makes no sense. And, and I think the thing about it is you guys, you're at the beginning, which is fun. You know, for both of you, but but you've also and I will tell you this too, of all the people I've interviewed and people that made made it, whether they made it big or made it on their own.

They all took a risk. You guys are taking a risk. Both of you educated.

Both of you could go out and get another gig. You know, you could go work on aircraft and you can go. I forgot what you said.

You're in telecommunications.

[Wake the Nile]

Telecom.

[The Trout]

So I mean, both of you could go like, well, screw this, I'm done. So you have and I'm sure you've already thought about this. Okay, how long are we going to do this?

Because it's like, you know, and how much how much do we have to do to get it there. But I just think that if you get surround yourself the right people, you can get where you want to go. Do you have plans to start doing and you may already be doing it doing live performances?

[Wake the Nile]

Yeah, yeah. The you know, with the album cycle coming up, we're almost done with the full recordings of the album.

[The Trout]

So how many songs are going to be on the album?

[Wake the Nile]

Nine. Nine. Okay.

So it's not just an EP.

[The Trout]

It's an album. Okay.

[Wake the Nile]

Yeah. And after that's done, you know, we well, we think it will probably drop another single or two. Put some cool content around and we got a couple more that we'd like to kind of pepper in there as we're bringing in, we're starting to notice an influx of new followers, not in like any kind of, you know, crazy mass proportion, but slowly, surely new people we've never seen before slowly starting to see reels and find the group and you know, hit that follow button.

And we've kind of laid a bit dormant on what we've used for the beginning material and for the first three singles. So aside from a really cool unplugged thing we did recently, which will be kind of peppering into that we were thinking maybe a couple more singles and do some more cool videos with cool concepts and you know, and, and just kind of, you know, give that as something to the new people coming in and, and then album cycle begins where we get the merch lined up, we get the album art decided we you know, we start to do all that stuff and then plan the actual release party. I think that's our first real gig.

[Intro]

Yeah. No, go ahead. I was gonna say to tie it to what you were saying earlier about us having a little mileage on us and coming into this with some of the mistakes already made.

One thing that I'm really thankful for, actually, I can tie this to a lot of things. Dom and I are in many ways, kind of opposite personalities, right? And one of the things that I really appreciate is that I'm that person, the person you're describing who just wants to hermit away in the house, write songs all day, record them and never go do any of the brand stuff, promote myself, post this.

This is what we're working on today. Check us out on Instagram, like, subscribe. All that stuff is entirely antithetical to my personality.

I literally didn't have any social media until Wake Them Up launched, right? I didn't have an Instagram, didn't, my Facebook wasn't, you know, dead for over a decade. We weren't even friends on a social media platform.

And we knew each other for like six years. But on the opposite side of that, and I think you wouldn't mind me saying this, Dom thrives in that world, right? He's obviously had experience, you know, being a part of a band that's promoting itself on those platforms.

And so he knows what it takes to get that traction and to really promote, be a self-promoting entity in terms of an independent band, right? So I think part of what makes this Wake Them Up project work is that he has that experience and he's okay in those spaces. And also, he's very receptive to the creative input that I bring in, even though I don't have that experience, right?

So I can come to this with a very sort of like naive, you know, blue sky child's mind and say, oh, let's try this idea, like, see how it goes. And so sometimes those things are like, maybe that's what's giving it that sheen of uniqueness is because I'm not looking at people's feeds to see, oh, what's going on on music Instagram that's driving engagement? It's just like, this is something I thought about, let's try it on our Instagram.

And so that's part of what makes it work. And so to tie that into the live performance aspect, one of the things that Dom was adamant about is that we don't have to hurry up and form a five-piece and then go out to the first, you know, live venue that will hire us and start playing music because that's the time of like being a band that is on stage and running those reps constantly. And that's the only chance of you getting noticed by an A&R who's walking past and say, oh, wow, I love that song.

I'm gonna sign you kids to a record deal. Those days are gone, basically.

[Intro]

Yeah.

[The Trout]

And it's all about playlists and all that stuff. But you know, at the end of the day, it's still, if your music's good, people will listen to it. And if you're different, because that's what I told you at the beginning, you're different.

You know, you're familiar but different. And so let me go back to the recording process. Do you guys do a lot of the tracks yourself and do stuff electronically?

I mean, like you had, do you sit down and play, I'm going to play bass and guitar, and you got obviously drums, if you want to do acoustic drums on that, somebody plays the synths, or do you bring people in to help you?

[Intro]

That's part of what the beauty of the recording process has been for us is we play everything we have to play. So we don't, we would never have to bring in a drummer because Don can play all the drum pieces that are parts that we need in our songs. And we would never have to bring in another lead vocalist because that's where I want to live.

It wasn't like a feature. But yeah, we haven't even got there yet.

[Wake the Nile]

We're not even at feature level yet.

[Intro]

But we've always set out to be, to have a revolving door of artists that work with us, right? And so we've been very meticulous about curating the right basses for the right track, right? So Don, with his, you know, Rolodex of Austin artists, is able to think, oh, this would be the right lead guitarist for this song, because they have the rock and roll sensibilities, or this guy has the right funk bass sensibilities, right?

So it's a privilege to, again, to work with someone who knows like so many different artists of so many different genre sensibilities that we can curate from and say, because the band by its nature is very genre agnostic. And so we don't want to...

[The Trout]

I like that. I like that. I like that.

Genre agnostic. I want to write that down.

[Intro]

That was pretty cool. Yeah, so we don't, we don't, we don't, we understand that if we ask a certain bass player who, like his, his bag is, you know, funk bass, to then play a rock and roll song, it might kind of stretch him outside of his limits. So we curate the cast of each record according to their specific strengths and sensibilities.

[The Trout]

And when is, when do you think the project or the album's going to be ready? Have you set a date yet for a release? Oh, I don't think I see that face.

[Intro]

No, the answer, the direct answer to that question is no.

[The Trout]

So have you, have you recorded everything? I'm sorry, did you record everything you're going to put on there? Are you going to record some more stuff?

It's all recorded.

[Intro]

Right now we're in the mix and master phase.

[The Trout]

Okay.

[Intro]

And so that's, because we don't have firm commitments on when those mixes and masters are going to be out. We are.

 Thank you for listening. www.TheTroutShow.com