Kristian from Kristian Montgomery & The Winterkill Band

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Just this past weekend, after recording this interview, Kristian lost his home in a terrible fire. Please consider donating to help him rebuild. ♥

Interview Details

Date: 2/1/2025
Location: Burlington – BHW
Length: 01:25:58
Episode Number: 53
Show Notes Link: https://vermonttalks.com/kristian-montgomery-and-the-winterkill-band/
Short Link: vermonttalks.com/53

Transcript

Becca: What’s New 802? I’m Becca Hammond and you’re listening to Vermont Talks. Vermont Talks may include graphic or explicit content. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Vermont Talks. I am here today with Kristian Montgomery of the winterkill band. The winterkill band is not with me today but Kristian Montgomery is here and it is the first of February in 2025 and this is episode 53. So Kristian Montgomery and the winterkill band are back roads rock from the Green Mountains of Vermont but you’ve also been called Appalachian, Appalachian, I can’t pronounce that word. Appalachian rock. There you go.

Thank you very much. Slightly country but not really country. Yeah, not really.

Not really. It tells that nice line where it’s not a standard country you hear on the radio. You’ve released five albums so far. Lower County Outlaw came out in 2024 and Prophets of the Apocalypse, your sixth album is coming out on March 15th of this year and you’ve been nominated for multiple music awards. Welcome Kristian. Thank you. So let’s talk a little bit more about the sound because we kind of got into it before I hit record which I always regret doing. Yeah. So country soaked. Country soaked rock. I think maybe that was the term I read on your website.

Kristian: Cajun Laced, country soaked. So my first concert ever was Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers and my second was Ozzy Osbourne and Anthrax. So I’ve, you know, my library of music in my head is very diverse and I like all the melodies of country music just wish that they were played with a Les Paul throw a Marshall half stack. So I think that’s a good way to describe it.

Becca: Yep. Yep. Your music is very clean. You’ve been doing this for a while because the fact that you have six albums coming out in five years you said?

Kristian: Well, it’s five albums in four years. Yeah. So a total of, I’ve recorded 57 songs in four years.

Becca: All under the same. Kristian the same band the whole time or have you swapped people out?

Kristian: No. It’s, it took a move to Vermont to have a band and this last album was a collaboration. It wasn’t just me. I originally began this, this form of my career in Hanover, Massachusetts just out the Boston with producer Joe Clap at ultrasound studios and we brought in session people and I had Jeff Armstrong at the Delta generators played drums and had some pretty cool, you know, bigger name, you know, session people come in. So this last record though was, was a collaboration. It was, you know, I didn’t have to write everything. It was cool.

Becca: That’s always a little nice depending on your attitude about music. Yeah. And how many people are in the band? Because I know obviously you’re in and you play guitar, correct?

Kristian: I play guitar and I sing and my drummer’s name is James, James Pesler. He’s from Wells, Vermont and my guitar player, John Clarks from Manchester and then my bass player, Jake Hill is from Arlington. So all Vermont guys.

Becca: Cool. That is an area of the state I can openly admit I don’t know a lot about because I grew up up on the Canadian border. I know itself of here. What’s it like? Is it very rural?

Kristian: It’s well, Manchester is a very affluent area. It’s kind of stuck in between all of the mountain resorts. A lot of people go there to marry, you know, but it’s also, it’s also a very artistic community.

You know, the, a lot of famous people live there. You know, like the, I can’t remember his name now, but he was the gentleman who plays the most interesting man in the world. Oh, yes.

Yes. I’ve gone to multiple parties with him and the Southern Vermont Art Centers down there and it’s just, there’s a lot of people creating music and that’s where I recorded Lower County Outlaw with Andrew Kos who moved his studio in Times Square to Manchester during, you know, around the pandemic time. And, you know, he recorded that album and his client before me was Alicia Keys and it was kind of like, okay, you know, I’m going to record this extraordinarily, you know, Grammy, talented Grammy winner and here’s this guy, Chris, who has a horse farm up the road.

Becca: Hey, you’re a contender for sure. That is pretty amazing though that Alicia Keys came to Vermont to record something. I always am fascinated by all the little music studios. They’re tucked all over the state and that’s it.

They get amazing clients and it’s kind of funny because it’s just not, it’s in a town that you wouldn’t really expect sometimes for like, where did they go to eat? Awesome. Okay, so talking a little bit more about the albums you’ve released, which thank you, thank you for the albums. I really appreciate them. Do you have a favorite? Do you feel like anything’s changed over time?

Kristian: Well, I would have to say that the first one, the Gravel Church was probably the most important and there was a story behind it. I try to warn people in advance that it’s not scary, but I went through a nasty divorce. You know, my wife, April, was my high school, like childhood sweetheart, first girl I ever kissed and then should have stayed with her and then stuff happened. But I went through a terrible divorce and I was, you know, sitting in my living room and my former spouse had texted saying, hey, I want you to bring the kids over and I mean, or I want to bring the kids over. I’m going on vacation and so I said no because I had been ill.

I’m a type one diabetic and I had had some medical issues and so I said no. Next thing I know, I’m being served a restraining order and I get this restraining order in the mail or at the door by the police officers. So I’m like, I didn’t do anything. I’m going to call, I’m going to let the police know that this is a false report. So I told them and they said, no, we’re not going to file anything.

Then I found the judge on Facebook and I sent him a message. Next thing I know, I’m being arrested and thrown in jail for reporting a crime. I had, I went through hell and then the long and short of it is that, you know, they threw me in jail. I just, it was a mess.

My wife and I just kind of like, we just made it through it. She came and visited me almost every day and, you know, even got into a fight and got thrown into solitary confinement and it was a scary time and I had completely put the arts behind me when I was married to this person. So I got out and I wrote the gravel church and I had started working on it actually in this county jail. I wrote most of the songs there, got out and released it, you know, recorded it, released it and all of a sudden it was boom. Like people are, Americana Music Magazine calls me up and goes, who are you? And I’m like, you know, and this is an amazing backstory and how did this happen? And I’m like, well, it was just, you know, this is what happens sometimes.

People are angry that you leave them and they act out. So the cathartic kind of just, everything came out, all the emotion, you know, I wrote songs for my kids, you know, I wrote songs for April, you know, wrote a song for my mother apologizing for being a bad son. And that just kind of turned into this springboard that was, you know, the second album, Prince of Poverty, you know, growing up poor, you know, fisherman family, which was my father’s trade, you know. So kind of jumped into the blue collar superhero. I’m going to get everybody to make the money that we’re supposed to make, you know, all of us who break our bodies and I’m going to start writing about that.

And, you know, long story short, it was just accolades started to come, you know, great reviews and I’m very grateful for it, but I’ve kind of never understood it. I’ve always kind of been like, can anybody just do this? Like, you know, doesn’t everybody just get thrown in jail for no reason and write a record about it?

Becca: Like, Yeah, that’s a wild backstory. You’re not alone though. That’s, that’s not a story that’s, I’ve heard similar things from other people. It’s pretty difficult when you’ve been accused of something to defend yourself in the way that feels like you should just be able to tell people that it’s bullshit.

Kristian: Yeah, well, the problem was is that everybody knew it was bullshit. Everybody knew that it was a complete fabrication. Everybody knew that she was just really angry. But one of my problems is that when I go all in on something, I go all in and when I decided I was getting divorced, I researched, I found that, you know, I mean, I knew guys always got the, the short end of the stick. And so I started lobbying for family court reform to say, hey, you know, people got divorced, wouldn’t make sense if like dad had the kids half the time, mom had the kids half the time, and you just let bygones be bygones, wouldn’t that just be better for everybody? And it’s just not good for the lawyers because they don’t make as much money. So, you know, yep.

Becca: And just the court systems and just the whole system, the way it works is so complicated and confusing and painful. And that’s it. When something happens, they decide they kind of, what is the, it’s supposed to be innocence before you’re proven guilty, right? But that’s not how society works.

Kristian: It’s not, it’s not at all.

Becca: So, yeah, that’s unfortunate. But the honesty and the, the creativity that you’re able to express, that’s why people, that’s why not everyone can do it. A lot of people can’t be honest and just open, especially with emotions, right? And that’s what makes good music. And it sounds like it was very, like you said, cathartic, like just, just get it out there.

Kristian: It was, it was interesting too, like to be suddenly thrown into a situation like that, like being a guy who, you know, I, I was, I was fun when I was a kid. And I, yeah, I got into a, I, I, I disappointed my parents once or twice, but I’d never been in a situation like that. And the people that I met, I met heroin addicts who became heroin addicts because they were, you know, molested or they were, something terrible happened to them.

All of these things that made them who they were. And I’m sitting there and I’m going, it’s not a problem with this guy. It’s a guy who’s been on us and this poor guy, he was one of the, this kid, Chris Nemitz, he was a heroin addict. He had had a terrible, terrible life. And he got out shortly after me and was found dead in a field in a tent by the airport in Rhode Island. He had overdosed. He was probably one of the most talented carpenters I’ve ever talked to. Super smart dude. Those people, there’s a lot of people that were, were breaking worse than they were broken before they went in. And it needs to get fixed.

Becca: Oh yeah. And so much of it is. And the amount of people I know, Vermont got hit really hard with the whole opiate epidemic thing where someone got in a car accident.

That’s usually where it started. Someone got in a car accident, someone hurt themselves. Doctors gave them a bunch of drugs and then it became, they don’t work anymore. Like, I know a guy who shot himself and took an axe to his own leg to get more opiates. And like, he was the nicest person. So that’s a talented person, smart guy. And it just breaks lives.

And that’s it. They end up in the system, right? Because whatever, whatever drove them there is illegal.

And then all of a sudden it really, and then they’re, they’re guilty. All right. You know, they’re done. The society has judged them and they’ll, now, yeah. Now they’re in the pit and it’s just the attitude that we hold towards people, which is so insane because if you have a nice white collar, you can get away with, you know, ripping off millions.

But if you’re a poor person and you steal from a store, then you’re in jail for a really long time. Yep. Yep. No, justice isn’t quite justicing. No, no, it’s not. The way it should. So I feel for you. I’m sorry that you had to live through that.

Kristian: My producer said something, you know, he was like, I’m really sorry you had to go through that. But I’m so glad that this came out of it. You know, it was, he was pretty psyched and probably his name is Joe Klopp. And he’s just, if I had to say that I had like the biggest influence in music, it would be him and my former bass player, Dave Leach, who were both producers of mine at one time or another, and super talented dudes. You know, they get me.

Becca: Hey, you’ve got to make lemonade out of lemons, that cold concept. No, that’s music is so powerful too for that connection, right? Because a lot of people who heard your music probably said, I hear myself, you know, I hear something in my own life being expressed. That’s why it means so much, right? People can’t express that. Okay, so you took me through the first two albums. Yeah, okay. Carry on if you’d like. All right.

Kristian: So after, after Prince of Poverty came out, I got nominated for the Boston Music Awards and it kind of came out of the blue and it was really cool because, you know, I’m not, I’m not a younger musician. I wouldn’t call myself an older musician. But I had been nominated for the Music Awards when I was in my 20s in Boston.

And I was, it was for best vocalist or something like that. And I was with a band called Bone Dry System who, you know, guys I still long to create music with. And I got, all of a sudden, I’m like, holy shit, like I’m back to kind of where I started again, you know, or back where I left off. And then I got nominated for the New England Music Awards.

And I was like, all right, maybe we’re on to something. So I’m going to make the investment and record another album. So I had been listening to like a lot of really old time rock and roll, a lot of Buddy Holly and, you know, Chubby Checker and all sorts of, you know, cooler, you know, just older music.

Becca: And that was all the 50s, right? Which is the greatest. I love 50s.

Kristian: Chuck, Chuck Berry and I mean, you know, so at the same time, my daughter Taylor was getting married to a woman. And, you know, I was thinking about it in putting everything in perspective because it was so cool because her wife, Sydney, came to my house and said, dad, can I marry your daughter?

And I was like, oh, yes. You know, she’s hilarious. She should be a comedian.

She’s such a, she’s so funny. And I was thinking like, how was this ever wrong? And we’re, it’s weird because we’re back in this era of, you know, it was, it was, we were so close to everybody saying, live and let live.

And then the election happened and we’ve, it’s like, boom, back to like square one. But Heaven for Heretics was all about these people who lived on the periphery who were all of a sudden just invited back, you know, into the mainstream to say, hey, we’re all in this together. And, you know, to quote Bob Marley, you know, one love, you know, where we’re all here. We were all at that point where we were about to say like, what if, like, what if this life is just about love? What if that’s all it’s about?

What if all it’s about is just being nice to each other and being kind and it just being about love and then boom, this crap. But Heaven for Heretics was kind of like that welcoming album of like, hey, listen, come on, everybody in the pool, we’re just going to have fun. And it was a, the music kind of represented that.

It was just about these songs, you know, I was writing these songs that were just fun, you know. But then, so I, at that point, my wife and I were living on Cape Cod and we had a boat and COVID hit and COVID was kind of in its prime. The first three albums were kind of recorded in that, under that COVID umbrella. I mean, the first record, I was like taking my mask off to sing. But the April and I decided we needed to get away from the crazy people that had inspired me to create music.

So we came to Vermont and we bought a house in Wallingford and, you know, it started off, you know, nice and quiet. And then she got goats and then chickens and ducks. Now we have horses.

Less quiet. And then in her infinite wisdom, she says, you know, we should foster children. And then we started taking in foster kids and trying to, you know, repair damaged people. Right now, we have this amazing six-year-old autistic boy who has become my shadow and he’s the coolest little dude. But back to music.

Becca: That’s really wonderful. And thank you because, my gosh, the amount of kids in those systems and the amount of people that have been there. Brush over them.

Kristian: Yes. No, I hear you. So I met Andrew Koss in Manchester through my guitar player, John, who, John was an electrician. I’m a plumber by trade. And we were working on a condo units together. And, you know, John said, oh, you should meet my friend Andrew. And, you know, I got to meet him. And, you know, he’s a very, you know, very successful man. And he has worked with a lot of, you know, high end talent, you know, A-listers. And I went over to his house and we jammed a couple of times.

And then, you know, I had been playing with a bunch of bluegrass guys up here when I first moved up here. And I was thinking, God, I just can’t do this. I can’t do this. Like, I, I’m Irish, Scottish and Danish. And it’s in my blood to do this. But it’s just not working for me.

Becca: Right.

Kristian: Hey, um, you know, whether it

Kristian: feels like you know, I bought a banjo and I and I just found that if you are not an excellent banjo player banjo sounds funny.

Becca: Oh, yeah.

Kristian: The roles are so, there’s a lot of practice. You have to, you’re either excellent or you should just be playing in your room by yourself.

Becca: And it’s so loud.

Kristian: It’s so loud. Yeah. And it’s a lot of practice. And so, you know, uh, you know, we had a cool little jam thing going on. I started playing out called, you know, I originally called it Christian Monk Armory and the Winter Kill Band with me and these these guys from the area who all played bluegrass. Um, and then I met John and John is a big guns and roses and, and, you know, Soundgarden guy and we immediately hit it off. We went to Andrews and Andrew said, I want to, I want to record an album with you. And I was like, I can’t afford you.

Like, look at all this equipment. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, we’ll work something out. I’ll just play drums on it and we’ll call it, you know, that’ll be that.

Next. So he played drums and, um, on lower county outlaw and, um, produced it, played some guitar on it, uh, keys and all that. I mean, he’s a multi-instrumental guy. Um, you know, he was saying, like meanwhile he has his studio, then he has a house next to it that says artist residents where the artists come and stay while they’re working with him.

Becca: Oh, that’s cool. Right. Well, you kind of need it here in the middle of nowhere.

Kristian: Right. And, uh, now he’d said, Oh, you know, the guy who mixed Peter Gabriel, so is staying next door. He’s been doing some work here and I’m like, Peter Gabriel’s like, Holy, that’s my like all time idol.

Um, so anyway, you know, that album immediately got some accolades and I got nominated for the music awards in Nashville and then at the, in Saratoga, the Listen Up Music Awards. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

And then, uh, started working on the EP with Vincent Freeman at the Underground Studios in Randolph, Vermont. Oh yeah. That’s cool. Nice. And boom, uh, we just got nominated for Americana Act of the Year and Country Artist of the Year, or what our favorite country artist that, uh, Listen Up in, um, it’s going to be at the Co-host Music Hall this year.

I think that’s in Troy. Cool. So that’s, that’s really where the story stops for the moment. Um, we’ve already started working on new stuff and trying to put together shows for the summer. Yeah. I’ve been desperately trying to break into the Burlington scene, um, with no luck. I’m trying to find compatible acts to jump in with.

Becca: Right. Yeah. Um, like, we should talk off air because I feel like I know people who might, who might go well with what you’re playing.

Kristian: I’ve become great friends with Tim Lewis who works at WKLM. Um, and he’s just, he’s been such a positive, like, you know, you know, plays the song and then says, thank you for making this song, Christian. I’m like, thank you for playing it.

Becca: Like, yeah, he’s a great guy. He, that’s, that’s great that you’ve met him. We should talk more because I could see you playing at Muddy Waters for sure. There’s a lot of places up here and a zillion bands that are playing out.

There’s little venues to the, uh, Seller and, uh, Desposito are two that I think are probably easier to wed your foot into if you’re trying to book shows. Yeah. That’s just my guess. But now I know the, besides, uh, Muddy, not Muddy Waters, what am I thinking of? Nectar’s, Nectar, Muddy Waters is like next to Nectar’s. Nectar’s is obviously really a big deal, but, uh, they just started playing shows at, oh man, of course, my, the pizza joint that’s right on the corner of church in Maine, which of course is now escaping my brain. It’s going to come to me in five minutes, but, but cool.

I can see it. We’ll get you in higher ground soon. I’m honestly kind of shocked that you haven’t played up here more because you’re clearly being recognized. People are connecting with your music and you’ve already produced so much music. So, sorry, go ahead.

Kristian: Well, it’s, uh, you know, with our, with our guys, like, you know, everybody in my band is, is a really blue collar, you know, guy. Um, and so, you know, when, when we try to get shows, you know, they’re like, all right, oftentimes we’ll be like, guys, I got offered the show. It’s a Saturday night and we’re going to lose money. They’re like, like, oh, right. All right. Just this last one. Like, okay.

Becca: Yeah. Cause you’re, is it about a two hour drive?

Kristian: Hour and a half. Okay. Yeah. From my house. Right. Right. And that’s a stretch though. Like, that’s it. And when you’re, when you’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s great for recording studios, but it’s hard if you need to drive anywhere to actually have the gig.

Becca: Cause lugging all the gear, the actual drive itself, when gas is expensive, like there’s a lot of time to go into that.

Kristian: When I grew up south of Boston, um, most of my shows were in the city. So I was very used to doing an hour and a half drive into the city and then an hour and a half out. And city driving is a lot different and a lot in my personal opinion, less dangerous. Um, because the car seems to kind of remember the way up here, you’re avoiding different creatures. Um, you know, steep, steep drops right off the road.

Becca: Like there’s just no room for error. It not only does it go right and left, but it goes up and down and there’s woods everywhere.

Kristian: There’s no visibility. Dear, I drove back from Johnsburg, New York one night and we must, I must have missed, like barely missed a dozen deer.

Becca: Like, yeah. Cause that’s it. They stand in a herd in the road, right around a corner. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s definitely, that’s it. And if you’re someone who lives out there, I know cause coming to Burlington for me was a big deal. And like that is not, we’re not a big city, but that was as big as it got. And that was like a once every three month kind of thing. We didn’t, we just didn’t do it.

You kind of just stuck around where you were. It’s hard to get good bookings. I can appreciate that. It’s also hard to just organize and bring people and if you don’t have like a good van to move everything and everyone’s got their own car full of stuff, I can appreciate the struggle.

Kristian: Yeah. So where did you play last year and what kind of shows do you like booking? Like do you play music? Sorry, what am I thinking of? Of course, outdoor shows. Yeah. Festivals.

Kristian: That’s what I’m thinking of. Well, last year, I became associated with, well, I became friends with a couple of people at this online radio show called Radio Radio X in Troy. One of the gentlemen, Vito Cicerelli, who was a very well known radio personality and he was a musician in his younger years. He just liked my music and he started helping me find shows. So, you know, I played Rock in the River in Troy, New York. Played at a, he’s booked us in a couple of plays. We played at an Apple Orchard, but it was probably one of the better paying gigs that we had over the summer. Last year, Greg Bell booked me to play the Eastbound Throwdown, which is a huge annual event that the band Eastbound Jesus does in Salem, New York.

And it’s a huge, kind of, you know, wood stocky kind of vibe and thousands of people. That was kind of like our real introduction to the scene. And, you know, first two songs we came out, played, and I said, guys, I’m just, we’re going to play those two songs and we’re going to wait, you know, and see the reaction we get because, you know, a lot of the other bands were Bluegrass-y, Country-er. And our first two songs were Real Face Melters and we waited and we waited after we were done and all of a sudden the applause came and we were like, all right, all right, they don’t hate us.

Speaker 3: This is good. So, let’s keep going. But, you know, I’ve done a ton of podcasts. I’ve done a bunch of singer-songwriter showcases for different production companies and stuff like that. And, but this summer I know we’re going, we’re going to go back to New York quite a bit, Saratoga. I’ll be in Boston in June. I’m going to Europe in August.

I’m booked a couple of shows over there, you know, Cool Story. My cousin, Sarah, called me from Copenhagen. She manages a vinyl record store, used record store in downtown and she goes, Christian, you’re on the radio.

Kristian: Like, thanks for playing me. And she’s like, no, you’re on the radio and they were playing me on the rock station in downtown Copenhagen. That’s really cool. And I was like, wow. So, you know, I’d thrown a couple of bucks at a radio promoter to say, Hey, where do you think this song would fit?

And he sent it to a bunch of people and every one of them liked it. So I thought that was pretty wild, that that’s where half of me is from. That’s my dad’s country. And it was kind of cool to get that kind of like homegrown, local love.

Becca: That is really cool. And that means it’s connecting with people, right? And it means it’s good or else they wouldn’t.

Kristian: Yeah. I mean, it was great. They talked about it. They talked about the album and said he’s coming into the studio in August and he’s a son of Denmark. He’s coming home. You know, it was nice. That’s really cool.

Becca: That’s awesome. Now, I really enjoy your type of music. But I have such a hard time putting my finger on it because I don’t like saying country because it puts you in that bucket that’s so inaccurate. And so many people have snooty attitudes about country. If you’re not someone who enjoys bluegrass and really likes country and I say country, they all go, yeah. But it’s not, it’s rock.

Kristian: So, you know, Eric Seger from the New Hampshire Hippo, he’s a writer, journalist. He coined the phrase Appalachian Rock. He goes, Christian, you are the founder of Appalachian Rock. And I recently sent him the new EP and he said, to say that you are the next Tom Petty is an understatement. And I just went, wow.

Becca: Oh, that’s a huge compliment. You’re my new best friend. Right. Well, that’s it. Tom Petty is a closer definition. But you don’t want to just say you sound like Tom Petty because you don’t sound like Tom Petty. You sound similar. Like there’s the underlying genre. It’s a little, it’s so American sounding.

I don’t quite know how to put my finger on it, but I always think of like Skinner. You know, it’s Southern Rock. That’s what they called it, but it felt a little country.

Kristian: We’ve got some government mule comparison. You know, the, I mean, even, I mean, leaving Texas, people have said it’s very foo fighter-y. It’s very, you know, very Dave Groley.

Becca: So, it’s got rock. It’s 100% a rock flavor of some sort. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s interesting. Because, and you don’t have an accent that’s pronounced in any way, shape or form. I feel like when you come from certain regions, right? Southern Rock came from their Southern accent more than anything. There’s a band, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Pine Grove, but they’re out of, I want to say the Tennessee area. And like that flavors their rock in a certain way. It just gives it a little extra spice. It’s interesting because you don’t quite have an accent, but, and you’re not from…

Kristian: So, I mean, I’ve moved around a lot. I was born in Florida and, you know, to a Danish father and two very Danish grandparents on, you know, his parents spoke good English, but it was, the accent was like, you know, it was there. But my mom, she’s Boston, you know. So, like, you know, April will tell you when I get up in the morning, I’m like, April, it’s freaking cold.

Speaker 3: Right. You could hear the Boston when you said that.

Kristian: But, you know, she, we also, you know, she’s from Cape Cod, south of Boston, you know, and they kind of have their own little accent and I was living, I’d live there too. And so, you’ve got the Boston, Danish, you know, it’s…

Becca: It all balances out though.

Kristian: You’ve said very American. Yeah, you know, Florida, you know, a little southern there too, but it’s, I don’t know, I managed to… Nobody tells me I sound funny, so…

Becca: No, no, you don’t. That’s it. It’s interesting to hear that you’re half Dutch.

Speaker 3: Because when you start… Sorry, Danish. Sorry. Because when you started actually speaking, when you talked in your cousin’s accent,

Kristian: it’s very obvious that you can speak like that. Yeah. Oh, it’s cool. You know, I work as an engineer for a hospital and we hired a new vice president who’s Danish, you know, and he walks up to me and he’s like, hello, my name’s Eric and I went, hi, hella Christian, and he just… He was like, I don’t know, they told me you were Danish. He’s like, yeah, I’m Danish. I don’t speak Danish. And I was like, oh, jeez, who doesn’t speak Danish if you’re Danish? You know, but he…

Becca: It’s the second… You got to go two generations deep. Yeah.

Speaker 3: You start losing it. Yeah.

Kristian: So it’s a prideful thing. I mean, I like the fact that my father’s got the Viking ancestry and, you know, it’s kind of cool.

Becca: No, it’s definitely really cool. Did I read that… Because you said he was a fisherman. Yeah. But you’ve been like on the water a lot. It seems like you had a boat as well. Yeah. So tell me about that. I always am fascinated by ships because it’s… We’re so landlocked here, our ships are pretty small.

Kristian: When I was young, I mean, one of my first jobs was working on a long-lining ship, you know, fishing for swordfish. I’ve worked on worked on my dad’s cod fishing boat. I worked with my grandfather lobster fishing. And April’s father was formally, you know, had his own boat and he had lobster fishing business. And, you know, we spent quite a bit of time out at sea. So yeah, it’s… I don’t know, it’s just a very natural place, you know, and being a dane too, it’s cool because they say that Christ doesn’t exist at sea. But so you have Thor on the water and then you have Christ on land. And, you know, it’s kind of cool. I get all into the pagan ancestry. And I mean, I’m covered in… This, you know, was the logo on my first boat ever when I was 13. So I don’t know. Cool. Do you still have a boat? No, no.

Becca: Now we have horses. Being in the middle of like land?

Kristian: No. No, I like it. We have two horses and we ride up the mountains and you know, the big garden. We live… We’re lucky. We got a 200-year-old farm that was right in between the Taconic and the Green Mountains and right on the Otter Creek going through Vermont.

And we have the cows in the backyard and then we have our horses and it’s so much safer. I was telling April, I mean, I was out on a trip. It was like a… It was a party boat for a company I was working for. We were having a party and striper fishing. And I had a great white shark come up and take a striped bass right out of my hand, dog taking a treat. It just kind of came up and went, boom, took it and ran. And I was like, it’s time to move to the bones.

Becca: Yeah, that’s pretty terrifying to say the least. Fish freak me out. Big fish. I couldn’t do it. I can’t imagine catching a swordfish. How big is a swordfish? That’s a pretty big fish, right?

Ew, 12 feet long. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t think I’d like that. I don’t like the sturgeons in the lake. It’s really cool though, like being a waterman, I’ve heard that phrase.

We don’t use it in Burlington because our lake isn’t big enough for that. But that’s incredibly cool. That’s such an interesting skill said. Do you think… Is there music associated with being on a boat? Is that a thing?

Kristian: I don’t know of it. I mean, you gotta watch Jaws.

Becca: Oh yeah, well, yes. I have seen Jaws, of course. I mean, most of the old Irish folk songs are usually start with someone coming back from sea, or most of the old Celtic sea shanty songs, which I sang quite a few of as a boy for tips at pubs and stuff. There’s a band from Denmark called Nephew, and they have a specific song. It’s like they’re singing to the fjord to the bay. Cool. They’re a great band.

Kristian: When they sing in English, it’s embarrassing, but when they sing in Danish, it’s great.

Becca: Hey, I mean, if I sang in any other language, it would be god awful. So understandable.

Kristian: But the Danish name for farmer is landman.

Becca: Interesting. That’s interesting. Makes sense. Which is, you know, that’s me now. Now I’m a landman. That’s really cool. I love the rural life in Vermont. Someday I hope to have animals again and just be… It’s so quiet and peaceful and good for creativity. I’m sure being in… Well, I’ve been in the city a bit compared to that area, and it’s not as good for making music. Your neighbor’s bang on your walls unless you’ve got a house which is not cheap in this area. So a lot of musicians are living in apartments. It is not conducive to making a band, I can say. So I miss the peace and tranquility and freedom of expression being out there. Because you can scream and no one really cares, usually, in those areas. Yep.

Kristian: I mean, it is nice. It’s quiet and, you know, it’s kind of cool to live in an area where you’ve only got X amount of neighbors. Like, you know them all. It’s not like the city where you’ll never meet everybody, you know.

Becca: Yeah. So are all of your… You said your bandmates are on different towns, but they’re all fairly close.

Kristian: Yeah, they’re all the same area. Yeah, that’s really convenient. It’s so hard, but it’s snowing out and I see you or whatever to actually get everybody together.

Becca: Yeah. Are there… You just said you were at the old post, right? Yeah. That would be a fantastic place for you to play. I bet they would eat your music up there.

Speaker 3: Yeah, all six of them.

Becca: Oh, is it dead tonight? Oh, it gets bump and… Did you get to see out back? Not the… We’re just going off on the old post. I like to go off on render tangents on this show, so don’t worry.

We’ll get back to talking about you. But the old post has a very big stage out back, actually, with all sorts of lights set up. Like, it’s actually a very professional stage for being the old post. Yeah. And they do battles of the band and stuff. Oh, you’re cool.

Yeah, yeah. They have… I think it’s like every week they have a band in there, but then they do a very official battle of the bands with like multi-weeks and they narrow it down and someone wins. So… Really, really enjoy your music there, because that’s it. The few bands I’ve seen are kind of toeing the line of this… It’s a little bit country rock, but not… Yeah.

Like, not full country. So, yeah, I can definitely see you playing there. It’s a funky spot. That’s it. I’ve been there when it’s totally dead and I’ve been there when I’m like, God, you can’t even hardly walk around in this place. So, it comes in…

Kristian: We’ve got kind of… We’ve got mixed in with a lot of different jam bands, but we’re very far from that. Like, we’ve… I do enjoy the phrase, you know, well, our songs are so good, we make them 12 minutes long. And I’m like, that’s cool and all. We just did. We’re… Um, it’s, you know, I was telling our, my bass player, Jake, I’m like, Jake, it’s like, as soon as people start bouncing, our songs are over. And he’s like, get their use to those guys.

Becca: Well, that’s it. Yeah. If you play with, if you play with a jam band, so expecting it to last 10 minutes.

Speaker 3: What? That’s funny. There’s a lot of jam bands around town.

Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of big pot smoking. You know.

Becca: Hey, I mean, fish came from Brunnington, right?

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I, all the love to the jam bands. It’s not my favorite though. I don’t, I don’t have pure love for the jam bands because there’s a certain point where this, I’m a bass player and I just feel for the bass player. I’m like, you’ve been playing the same four notes over and over and over for so long, man. Yeah. Yeah. They’re fun though. We’re going to get you hooked up with some of these other country rock bands around town. They’re here. They’re, they’re around.

Kristian: That’s good. It’s nice to know because I’m looking for them.

Becca: That’s it. There’s, Vermont has such a massive music scene. It’s honestly hard to narrow it down because there’s, there’s got to be like thousands of bands. For there’s being such a small population in this state, I’m always shocked by how many bands there actually are because everyone can tell me a different band from somewhere around that I haven’t heard of. And I’m actively like trying to find bands. So it’s kind of amazing that I can, you could probably list off six bands I’ve never heard of. Every band I talk to can do the same thing. And they’re all locals. Yeah. And so many of them are so talented, but it’s like very hard to find people in certain niches because there’s so many.

Kristian: There is like one of the things that I found that’s changed. There used to be such a huge amount of people who are in search of new music. Like they were, they were at clubs on a regular basis, sitting at a bar waiting for the next big thing to play in front of them.

So they could say, I remember when they played for just me and the bartender, you know, and now look at them. It seems as though that’s kind of passed. Like it, we’re, we got to have, I mean, especially in these times, there’s got to be a renaissance. There’s got to be a huge upheaval of creativity to fight back against all of the negative that’s going on in the world.

That’s the only way. The only way we’re going to survive this is by creating beautiful things to put up against the darkness. And so we got to get people to go out. We got to get people to, you know, to, you know, leave their homes. Like COVID did such a number on us. Get out, go see the world, travel.

Becca: The cell phone addiction is killing me. I think it’s killing everybody. We don’t want to admit it because we’re all adults, right?

Kristian: Yeah. But we do it.

Becca: And it’s, and it’s not like young or old because I know baby boomers just as addicted to their cell phone as my, you know, as the kids are. So it’s, we’ve all got to kind of admit it to ourselves, right? Admitting that we have a problem is the first step because I’m just as addicted as everyone else.

Yeah. But that stupid cell phone is keeping us from community. Like we really need to come out and see our local musicians play and stop looking at our stupid phone.

Kristian: We, exactly. I need to be able to feed off of the crowd. I need to see the reaction. I want to have that face to face experience instead of having the assholes from Submit Hub tell me, I really love your song, but I just don’t think it’s, there’s this, this is one part that’s just not right for my playlist. Or, I mean, and I can’t, you know, I just released Leave in Texas, the first single off of my EP.

Becca: And yes, today, today, it dropped today. I sent, I spent 50 bucks on Submit Hub to send it out to like 20 caraters, all of whom told me the production, you know, not, I mean, I’ve only got like four responses so far, but it’s enough for April to hear me in the car go, fucking dick. What does he mean? He loves it, but it’s just not right. What does that mean? It’s like, it’s, it’s like when you get broken up with and told it’s not you, it’s me.

Speaker 3: It’s like, oh, it’s because they want the radio. Friendly bullshit that’s the peddling to the mass.

Kristian: It’s not Katy Perry. Exactly. It just drives me up a wall and then, you know, with the cell phone addiction, I’ll, I’ll, you know, April, wake me up. What are you doing? Or I’ll wake her up and you know, what are you, what are you doing? Just, just checking my streams. I want to just, I just released a single. You’d think somebody would frickin listen to it. Right.

Becca: Well, that’s the thing is that we all got kind of the world has changed so much in 20 years. YouTube used to be my favorite thing in the world. So I graduated high school in 2011. I found so much music on the old YouTube where Bo-Yo got famous. You know, these kids that were so talented and these just different bands and you just magically, you’d play one song and it’d be like, here’s 16 other songs that are amazing. And you would just find small musicians that you connected with so wonderfully and like that, they’re, you’re stacked against that. It’s really hard for you to actually connect with people because they’ve changed the algorithms. You know, it’s, it’s pushing the top musicians that are already famous.

It’s playing the same song six times. It’s, it’s broken that like find a new person thing that used to be what we went to the cell phone for was community. Let me find my friends. What are they doing today?

Kristian: Very. And we, and if we looked at, if we looked at it from a sociologist point of view, um, or even an economic point of view, it seems as though the, the people whose music is being heard, that is, that is the prominent, you know, in your face commercial music are the sons and daughters of the children of privilege.

Becca: It’s, it’s just, it’s like, Hey, our son is too stupid to take over the family business. Let’s get him a guitar. You know, it’s like, um, you can only hear Miley Cyrus’s voice so many times before you say like, the only reason this is happening is because she’s got the money to market it. Yeah. Oh, well, that’s it. Taylor Swift’s daddy bought the record company.

Speaker 3: Like that’s literally how she, anyone knows her name is the bottom, you know, button

Kristian: paid for pretty sure he bought the Kansas city chiefs too.

Becca: Probably. Well, yeah, that’s it. She’s, she drives me nuts of all. Like there’s a lot of them where I’m like, God, you just bought your way into the music.

Kristian: I’ve called her, I’ve called her Satan piss for the majority of the time that I’ve, you know, she’s been a musician. Yeah.

Becca: Well, it just is so not coming from a place of natural talent and just coming from a place of catering to the pop, whatever they can sell in the moment. Right. Yeah. Like whatever it is, because they literally, if people forget this, but they used to release everyone of her songs as a pop song and a country song, because they weren’t sure which market they were really going to shove her into.

Yeah. And they did that for the first, what, two albums and they had this whole, oh, she’s so misunderstood. Like, no, she’s not.

Are you kidding me? She’s like five foot 10 beautiful blonde, like place three chords badly. And her range is five notes wide. Like she’s so many more talented people whose daddy can’t buy the record store. Yeah.

Speaker 3: I agree. But that’s it. And they have, and it wasn’t like she was a musician who happened to be a pop artist. She was created to fit that mold of whatever was radio friendly. The A A B A. Yeah. Z A. Whatever the format is that she writes every single damn song to who it was created and it’s not real music.

Kristian: If you, if you get a chance, check out this artist named Monty M O T and Y X O N. The Monty’s on. He’s my nephew. He was just out in LA. He came home. He just had a son whom he named Silas Fox Montgomery. I was like, dude, that’s a cool name.

Becca: I love the name Silas. Yeah. I told him, I’m like, dude, you know, his nickname is going to be Sly Fox. He’s like, yeah.

Kristian: But he, but he, he’s my nephew makes me look like an amateur. He’s such a talented, we did melody on top of some like you hear something different every in every one of his songs. And he played the whiskey go-go to a sold out crowd.

And he kind of walked, he moved, he just moved back from Los Angeles with his girlfriend and they moved to Florida and had their son. And, you know, he’s, he’s of the same frame of mind as me. He’s like, dude, I couldn’t, I couldn’t give anybody money. He’s like, I couldn’t pay to get to that next level.

I couldn’t, you know, they want you to pay to get there. He’s like, it has nothing to do with talent. It’s got all the do with dollars and cents. And he’s, you know, he was really, you know, wrapped up in that scene. It ate him up a little bit that he was so frustrated with it.

He was like, listen, I’m writing these beautiful songs. You know, my brother, his father had passed away, who was another, you know, he got hurt, got on opioids and then got clean. And he passed from brain cancer a year, like maybe a year and a half later. But, you know, that set my nephew Logan off on this songwriting.

Just, you know, it was just amazing stuff that he was doing. And so it’s, it’s, it’s a very frustrating thing. It’s a very frustrating to be a blue collar, you know, hey, I’m down here. And at the same time being a Dane who says I’m six foot two, two hundred and forty pounds and I could take your stuff if I wanted to. But I’d rather you just buy this song off of me and, you know, we don’t have to go that route. But it’s, it’s very frustrating.

Becca: I do think things are changing now because everyone, it’s funny. The musicians I talk to over time. We end up talking about the same stuff. And right now everyone’s talking about grassroots community.

The tech billionaires, and I’m not trying to make this political, but the tech billionaires, freaking ticketmaster ruined the music scene. And we need to get back to communicating directly with each other instead of posting on Facebook and expecting your friends to see it because they won’t. They won’t see it.

They’ve stacked the algorithms so that even your best buddies won’t see your stuff. Like you’ve already got a website, right? Did you have a newsletter to send people on your website?

Kristian: I haven’t, but I have been in conversations with my manager about tech and about marketing in the way that things work now. And how in the, you know, algorithms, algorithms work, but also like, you know, he he’ll send me messages and saying, saying, stop sending on individual emails. He’ll say, you have to be CC because you have more of a chance of those emails getting through and nodding the spam box. If you do it this way, this way, and this way. And I’m like, God, this is so complicated.

Becca: Yes. Yes. Yes, it is. That’s it. They have stacked literally everything against you to the point where they aren’t teaching computer science kids how to set up web servers. This one’s killing me. They’re telling you to use Amazon, use a third party. They won’t teach a kid learning how to set up computers, how to set up a freaking website. Like, is this the world we’re heading to? Because I think we all should have our own communication streams, but

Kristian: freaking emails filtering you out for Instagram and Facebook. They have all of these rules and regulations where, you know, my new song dropped, I can share it on my stories and I can share it to X amount of my friends on a me to you basis. Yeah. Until they think it’s spam. Yes. And then they shut you off. So it’s like, hey, the first 10 got through, but I’ve got 5,000 friends that don’t know that I just released.

Becca: Yeah. Oh, exactly. And Facebook openly admitted that you, the way their algorithm works is you only get to see 30 of your friends posts. Yeah. 30 people. So if your friends with 5,000 people, it’s usually the 30 most recent friends are actually seeing your stuff. So they’ve stacked it where you have to pay them. You have to pay them a promotion.

Right. So that all of your friends might see it. Like they might. That’s not even a guarantee that all your friends will see it. They want 5, 10 bucks for that post to actually get seen by the people you thought well, where your community.

Kristian: Yeah. So I’ve got, I’ve got 5,000 friends and I spent $80 on an ad that told me that I could get between 200 to 1000 other people to see it. No guarantee. It’s you give us that 80 bucks and we’re going to tell you that you could get 200 people to see it up to 1000.

Yeah. Somewhere, somewhere in there, you know, let’s hope for the best. Just send us your money. It’s like I’ve never, that business model wouldn’t work anywhere else in the real world.

Becca: Oh, no, no. And it that’s the thing is everyone thinks we’re connected because we’re friends. But I, it’s starting to really bug me. I’m like, we’re, we communicate every day. Some of my best friends, we’re all even go in and be like, favorite them. And then I go look at their page and I’m like, I haven’t seen any of this. And like it’s stuff that I’m like, I kind of wish I’d seen some of this.

Like I’m not trying to be a bad friend and like not acknowledge stuff going on in your life, but it’s stacked against you. It’s so sad because my space, my space was the original, right? And we all saw only our friends. It wasn’t advertising.

It wasn’t stupid memes from stupid groups, from stupid pages that you don’t even follow, which is basically what it’s devolved into. So I feel like we need to like, okay, here’s my event. Here’s my band.

Here’s my new single I just released. And you got to separate it from the stupid tech giants. And that’s where the email comes in because I think email will survive. But I think Facebook is dying and Instagram is dying.

And all of these platform models, we’re, we’re not stupid. We know our friends can’t see our stuff or all getting really annoyed with it. And then you don’t, you don’t see your friends stuff.

Kristian: Not only can they not see you. It seems like people are moving over to blue sky. Yeah, that’s that’s been a big one. And that’s been that’s been driven more by politics, I think, but it’s and which is great. I mean, there’s, I suppose, creating these worlds, like I can only equate it to like when my kids would play Minecraft and they’d piss me off. And so I would like when they weren’t paying attention, go in and just totally ruin the world they made and they’d be so upset at me.

Oh my God, it’s gone. And then I’d be like, you’ll just have to build another one. And just don’t swear at your brother next time and you won’t have the world, you know, destroyed in front of you.

Becca: I bet they learned quickly too, because Minecraft mattered, right?

Speaker 3: Oh, it was amazing how like that became such a thing and they’d get so upset.

Kristian: Like, like, all right, well, you’re not going to swear at your grandmother again, right? OK, well.

Becca: It’s a great punishment. But we do, we built these weird little societies. But we always when you joined Facebook, and I think every every single person in the world who has a Facebook, he joined it because your friends were on it.

Yeah, that’s why social media existed in the first place. But it’s gotten to the point because I’m a software engineer, so this stuff drives me insane, where I’m scrolling and I start counting the ads. I count the things I’m not following. I count the ads and just the suggested crap. And it’s far outnumbering. Like just the ads in the bullshit is far outnumbering anything my friends post. And then I don’t even if I scroll forever, I’ll never see some of these posts.

And the amount of bands whose posts are an event that I see a week after it happened. And it makes me want to cry because I would have gone. I would. Why? Why are they doing this to us?

Right? Like what the hell is the point of being on Facebook? If I can’t even see my friends posts, which is the only reason I was on Facebook is to keep track of my friends and bands. Yeah. That I keep telling my friends and bands, I’m like, I don’t see your stuff until after a week. Like something’s breaking down in our communication because I am a fan, right? I want to see it. And I’m in dark.

Kristian: I hear you. I mean, I have, you know, I’ve had friends who have hit me up and said, Hey, I hear you’re nominated for the awards. And I’m like, yeah, they’re like, oh, I’m totally going to vote for you. I’m like, yeah, voting’s over. You can’t vote anymore. Like, and I didn’t win. Thanks. I lost by one vote, you know.

Becca: I hope that’s not true. No, that’s terrible. No, but I mean, that’s what I tell them. You know, it’s, I think it’s true. We have to start, you know, kind of following and paying attention to the things that we find to be important. I mean, I, you know, the politics of, you know, today, you know, being a Dane and with all the back and forth between the US government and the Danish government and Greenland and all this stuff. God, it’s so heart breaking. You know, I, I, I pay attention to all of the updates and and whatnot.

And, you know, I don’t know if anybody else has called them this yet. And it would be great if it started on your show. But we talk quite a bit in Denmark about President Yam tits. And, and he, it seems as though people have caught on to that.

I’m like, I’ve seen a couple of other people post about President Yam tits. And it’s been. It’s a very accurate.

It’s, it’s extraordinarily accurate name. And, you know, so it, but for me, like I stay in touch with my family over in Europe and and then. All right, of course. And they’re always sending me messages saying, are you OK? Do you need us to send a boat? Are you going to be all right? You know, what’s going on? They’re actively concerned and we are blind to it. It’s nice that you have family connections.

They’re keeping you updated. But my God, ads in Europe about like feed the starving kids in America. Yeah. To really put it in perspective how the rest of the world sees us as shocking.

Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are, we’re. We’re a country that’s slowly but surely becoming those with and those without. And it’s, you know, it’s sad. And, you know, my family, you know, lived through the occupation of Europe. You know, my uncle, Anka felt went into the concentration camps.

300 pounds came out less than 100. And it’s there. There’s so much, so many similarities that, you know, people. You know, create memes to like blow off like it’s so funny. You know, they, they, they’re, they’re, they’re posting these Hitleresque, you know, memes about, you know, the president and all this stuff. And I’m like, you guys don’t understand how close we are to that actually being a reality. Like that’s, that’s not, you’re not far off. Like started with the immigrants and the homosexuals last time. Yep. You know, who’s he going after next?

Becca: You know, so. Right. Right. Because that’s it. It’s, it’s so scary if you actually are a student of history to pay any attention. Because I think America fell into complacency, at least from my perspective. Everyone had this, I don’t like politics.

I don’t want to talk about politics. I don’t want to. Never mind. Let’s not. You’re everyone’s so emotional. You’re all so polarized. And it’s like, are you paying attention because I don’t think you are. Because if you were, you’d probably have an opinion and not just not like politics.

Kristian: I mean, I get, I get a lot of guff over writing political songs. I have a song called American Fire. You know, the first line is the president’s a fucking liar. You know, and it’s got banjo.

Nice. I didn’t play it. It wasn’t me. It was actual banjo player who was good. But, you know, writing songs, you know, political songs. It’s a great way to kind of get the word out.

It’s also a great way to get depressed too. When you go, man, I wrote this great song about politics. It’s right in your face, speaking truth to power. It’s catchy. It’s hooky. It’s got great lyrics. And it’s got five plays on Spotify. It’s like.

Becca: Right. Well, I honestly think they’re stacking that against you. Like because I know how in depth the AI is and how in depth the algorithms are and the subdivisions of who they can target with what. Yeah.

They know exactly what’s in the music and they know why other people see in it. That’s the thing is my friends started posting about Trump. And I usually see everyone over posts and I happen to type his name in because I was wondering if I had suddenly accidentally started following him. Everyone was saying, oh, my God, I’m suddenly following Trump. So I’m like, oh, my God, am I had to check and it popped up with about 20 posts of hers.

I hadn’t seen. And it’s like weeks of it. And I’m like, this is really, really cringy.

Like, because that’s it. I specifically favorite follow her. I, you know, everything she posts, I pretty much react to because she’s a good friend of mine.

Like, what the hell? So they know I swear to God, they know when you’re being political and they don’t anyone to see it because, you know, that doesn’t sell ads or whatever they’re trying to target you with the Timu crap that they want to sell you. That’s the whole point now, right? It’s to sell you something. Right.

Kristian: So I mean, it’s it’s it’s a. I think it would be good of everybody to just stop using Trump and and just just adopt President Yam, Ted. I just think we’re going to have a lot more fun and be able to laugh the next four years if we if we just keep making fun of them. Now, I got to meet him in the 90s. Oh, wow. He was a prick. Of course, I got to meet him outside of the Howard Stern show.

Becca: He was back in his WWE days.

Kristian: Yeah. You know, he was misogynistic. You know, the way he talked to women, you could just tell that this was a child who never experienced consequences. Like, this is a guy that never heard the word no. Like, he was that silver spoon spoiled. You know, I’m better than everybody else because my daddy made me this way. Right.

It’s he’s he’s a piece of work. And, you know, a lot of my friends living in the city I work in. It’s a very conservative part of Vermont and a very conservative, very homophobic, very racist part of Vermont.

Becca: And you get outside of Burlington. There’s a lot of that. That’s I grew up in rural areas. It’s like it turns red every year in my town.

Kristian: I grew up in. I mean, I first first day on the first day I was at my job, gentlemen was talking about politics and he said something to me. He goes, you know, Hitler wasn’t all bad.

Yeah. And I said, I said, you know, my my dad’s mom is Jewish. And I said, you know, shut the fuck up. I’m just going to say, I’m just going to tell you, I disagree with you. What the hell?

Becca: What the hell? I just that one kills me. I can’t believe because it’s how likely is it? Oh, someone in their family. Right.

Kristian: Somewhere was affected.

Becca: It was affected, who’s, you know, like would roll in their grave to hear them say that.

Kristian: This is the United States. We vote against our best interests on a regular basis. You know, that’s it.

Becca: No one knows what’s going on. Yeah. Look at Citizens United. Oh, I know. Right. Like the name of Citizens United and its core purpose was to allow corporations to own the government. Like and the people will argue that they don’t know what the hell it was.

Kristian: That was that bill. That bill was sponsored by Mitt Romney and his magic underwear. Yeah.

Becca: Oh, yeah. And we’ll talk about like the skeesiest thing, the name it that at a time where they were pushing so much propaganda. Yeah. And that was what year was that? It was right in the middle of the whole Bush administration in between, you know, the weapons mass destruction and then him claiming that they won. Right. Victory. We won his banner that claims that they won something.

Kristian: It was a. It was a troubling time. Exactly. And I remember talking to my family in Europe after that. And they and they went, so when when’s the company donates money to the politicians? You have to have a vote. So all the employees vote to say yes, you can. I’m like, no, no, no, this guy, the CEO just gives the money. And they’re like, they can’t do that. Like, no, that’s how it works.

That’s what the whole bill was for, was so that this guy who runs the company can donate the money, not everybody in the company, because they don’t consider the workers part of it. Right.

Becca: You know, right. Which is so insane to the rest of the world. Like, how could you have done this and call yourself a democracy? Right. Oh, yeah. Well, it’s just like the term lobbying. The term lobbying didn’t exist until the American government coined it when the Rockefellers and J.P. Morgan donated massive amounts of money to the Senate and the House to reclassify lobbying of, oh, you’re donating money to political causes that is now referred to as lobbying and will be legal. They used to punch each other in the head on the House floor when they were accused of bribery.

Kristian: In order, in order to, in order to prevent monopolies, we were, they were not, you know, companies where there were laws that you could not conspire to, you know, control prices. Like if you were the cable company, if you’re a Comcast and you send out a bill, you know, an advertisement saying 999 a month and then Verizon says, no, 999 a month.

It’s not because they actually talk to each other because they can’t. So they started associations, the cable providers association, where they all get together and say, let’s all just put it in at 9999 a month. And, you know, it’s like, you know, no competition anymore. It’s, you know, it’s American. So this is where we live. Oh my God, I’m depressed.

Becca: And now me too. It’s been a hard, frickin week. It’s been hard two weeks. But, but we’re going to wrap it back around to you

Speaker 3: because you’re the important part of this. Like community and listening to your local physicians. This is how we solve this problem. I truly believe this. This problem is solvable and it comes down to your neighbors. It comes down to disassociating with what the media bullshit is doing. Yeah. And what matters is your neighbors. Yeah.

Kristian: And I think I think what people have to understand too is if like all of our musical heroes, all of the greats, you know, from Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bonnie Ray, all of the classic, you know, you know, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, if they were to come out today with the same business, like in the same kind of way it happened when they became successful, it would not happen today. Like you would not find Jimmy. You know, somebody wouldn’t find Jimmy Hendrix playing in a club and go, holy shit, that was amazing.

Right. You’re going to see something on the internet and it’s, it’s, you know, if it’s a live performance, you can probably take it at face value that holy shit, that was a great live performance. If it’s that bedroom, emo, electronic, you know, produced like unless you see that dude live, right, you know, how this is going to go viral.

But he did none of the work that this other guy who’s, you know, he wrote the song, performed it live, mastered every minute of it. You know, you got to get out and see it face to face because it’s not real anywhere else. It’s just not. It’s. Yeah.

Becca: Oh, and they started doing that. Didn’t that get big in the nineties where they started over producing and just marketing? That’s it. They’d create a band. Incinc was created by producers. That’s the one I remember because I was a child and my sister loved Incinc and she had the video about how the producer was like, I have these five children.

I’m going to make a billion dollars. But one of them was like 35. The rest were like 16. Yeah. And they’re like, we’re going to make this band and we’re going to market it and it’s going to be the thing.

Kristian: I got to see something cool. So when, and, you know, I was in high school, my girl that I dated, her father was a drummer of Aerosmith and, you know, I was living in Marshfield in Massachusetts, which was a fishing village and, you know, going to school there. And, you know, I got to spend a significant amount of time seeing those people.

And then I got to learn about the business model. So Aerosmith had basically like fallen off the face of the earth. Nobody really even knew who the hell they were anymore. Um, I mean, they were a good band.

They weren’t a great band, but they were a good band back in the, in the 60s and 70s. Um, all of them moderately talented. Like no one in that band was a genius.

Nobody was a, um, you know, Savant. It was all just blue collar dudes who, you know, happened to start a band. So the Collins management group came in and said, listen, we are going to mass market you guys on a level never seen before. It goes, we are going to make you a household name. We are going to make merchandise. We’re going to do this.

We’re going to put your name on things. Right. Right. All you have to do is sign this contract. We own every aspect of you. We’re going to write the music for you. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. And they just said, well, we’re broke.

Okay, let’s go. Um, they released pump. All of the songs are co-written. And then, you know, they marketed like crazy. Like it was amazing what they did. I mean, they got a ride named after them at Disneyland, right? Clubs named after them. They’re starting. Yeah.

Becca: Was that one of the first like branded bands? Yeah. It was right. Cause that whole business model of making the band into the pop icon thing.

Kristian: Right. Everything rock and roll kind of became those dudes. Yep. Um, there was a little bit of a shake up, but you know, in the nineties with some of the, the, um, grunge stuff that happened, but Arrowsmith seemed to kind of just, they, they just had that business model and it worked, you know, and it was kind of like the Britney Spears thing where like they rode the clock out all the way to Vegas. Um, and they’re like, okay, you know, you know, you’re about to, to retire when you’re doing a residency in Vegas. Like it’s like time to hang it up. Um, but I, I, I feel like I got to grow up as like a gentleman savage. Like we got to do some wild and crazy stuff. And I want that for everybody today. You know, it’s, it’s so everything is just so just watered down.

Becca: You know, yeah. But yeah, the commercialization thing, cause the amount of people that, and I’m so guilty of this when I was younger, I’m so guilty of this is I wouldn’t go see a band unless I heard that band on the radio first. Like you didn’t support your local musicians.

In fact, they had attitude about them. Like, I don’t want to go see a local band. I don’t want to go to my local pub and listen to the musician playing. Like, I don’t know when the hell that started, but that, that was a thing even 15, 20 years ago where people started getting this chip on their shoulder about, well, MTV says, well, the top 50 says or whatever, you know, whatever the thing they’re listening to that they take guidance from.

Kristian: We, we talk quite a bit about the local scenes and the nepotism that sometimes destroys it. You’ll get a local scene with different booking agents, club owners. They find these favorites because they’re their buddies. Yeah. The quality of the music isn’t necessarily there, but they’re buddies. So they push it and push it and push it. Meanwhile, there’s all this super talent surrounded by it.

That’s never able to get in on it because of the nepotism. We got to start giving talent a chance. You know, you got to just start saying, Holy shit, listen to these guys. Put them in front of people for God’s sake, you know. You know, and don’t let what’s happening at the national levels get its fingers into what we’re doing locally.

Becca: Right. That’s it. Because your neighbors. Yeah. And honestly, even people who express horrible opinions that make you want to hate them, chances are 95% of the things in this world you relate to them on. Like they’re your neighbors, right? Like you probably shop the same store. You probably feel the same way about a lot of shit.

Kristian: Can’t tell you how many people I have met who have opposing political positions with me at one point in their life only to come back later on and say, you know, I really didn’t know what you were going through until it happened to me and now I get it, you know, right?

Becca: Right. People change. People change. You got to give them the grace to do that, too. That’s that’s it. It’s hard. It’s really hard, especially when things start getting as messy and shitty as they’ve been lately. Yeah.

But that’s it. You I almost you’ve got to approach some of these people with a little bit of pity, almost, because if they’re coming from such a place of like ignorance and hate, it’s usually like fear. Like these people are scared of something and they are so ignorant and they’re just in this like dark place where yeah, like you don’t you not pity. Pity is the wrong world, but almost like empathize.

Like I can’t imagine how bad it’s going to be that that’s what you resort to. And that gives you the room to give them grace and not just hate them.

Kristian: Yeah, we I work with a bunch of people who are often, you know, show a lean towards a racist point of view and homophobic point of view. And I was talking with one of them the other day and we had a group of guys. There was like five of us. And I said, did you know that one in five men is gay? And then I looked at this particular gentleman and I said, and I really hope it’s you because you’re the hot one. And then the look on this guy’s face took him took him a second and he just kind of before he went, oh, oh, wait. Like.

Speaker 3: Right. Right.

Speaker 3: He’s like actually scared of something, which is ridiculous, right? But that’s right. Like they have a fear that drives a hatred that’s just. It just doesn’t make sense.

Becca: Right. It doesn’t. To you and I, it makes no sense, but we aren’t that ignorant. I almost think of them as kids, right? You can’t hold a kid, you know, when they’re really young and they don’t. They don’t know. They just don’t know. You got to give them that like, you know, it’s OK that you don’t know.

Kristian: You’ll you’ll you’ll you’ll come around. Right.

Becca: Exactly. Yeah. That’s and I think if you if we can all kind of approach the attitude more like that. Yeah. Maybe we all can grow. Maybe we can all take a little bit, learn a little and stay informed, which is really hard. I hear you. But but well, we got to get you up here playing in Burlington because. I’d like to.

Yeah. We got to get you on Rocket Shop. I’ll talk to Abby. I think I think she’d probably welcome you. As well as the band, if you guys could come play here, I know. Oh, that would be killer. Right.

Because they the space is for that exact thing as they set it up and they play it on the stream and. Yeah. Give you your dues and it’s very formal. I’m obviously a very informal podcaster. I love conversations. This has been a really fun conversation.

I think we are. Oh, we’re at an hour and twenty three minutes. Oh, geez.

Yeah. But it’s been really, really fun talking with you. I really enjoyed your single.

Let me Reese. What was the single that came out today? Leaving Texas. Leaving Texas, which you sent me the YouTube link. Is that the best place to listen to it or do you have somewhere else?

Kristian: Well, I mean, it’s on all the streaming platforms. I work through CD Baby and they release it to everywhere. So, I mean, it’s on the Spotify. I try to tell people not to go there and not support that. But is it on Bandcamp? It’s on Bandcamp. OK. Yeah. It’s on Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube. Do you know all the apples?

Becca: Is it on your own website as well? It is. Yeah. Yeah, because you’ve got KMWKB.com.

Kristian: Yeah, that’s where you can official site by our merch and all that jazz. And, you know, right.

Becca: And type in Christian Montgomery and the Winterkill Band and go to Christian’s website. Let’s start just pushing that go to your website and buy stuff from there. Like listen there or listen on the sites that actually. That would be awesome. Right. That help you out. That’s important. Any. So you’re you’re March 15th.

Kristian: March 15th, the album is officially out. And then we’re kind of off to the races starting to, you know, book and get our spring and summer summer stuff going. So we might do a show in Manchester, Vermont in April. We’ll see what happens.

Becca: Where are in Manchester?

Kristian: That’s I need to go down there at the roundhouse. It’s a it’s a local pub that’s got this giant room that was meant to play rock and roll and wasn’t used. And so we’ve kind of helped them build that, you know, crowd back. Cool.

Becca: Very cool. The roundhouse. Nice. Nice. Awesome. You have so many albums out already. Do you want to do you want to listen again?

Kristian: You want to. Sure. Listen, whatever you want. This is your time. I’ve got the gravel church, Prince of Poverty, a heaven for heretics, lower county outlaw and profits of the apocalypse.

Becca: That’s it for now, which is that’s a lot of music. Yeah, that’s impressive and only have five short years. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really impressive.

Kristian: So if people wanted to, they could vote. If you go to the Listen Up Music Awards, we’re up for Americana and Country Act of the Year. So it’d be great if people would vote. They just put Christian Montgomery down instead of the Winter Kill Band. I don’t know why, but it represents us all. Right. Right. You know, I am them. They’re me.

Becca: And I will link that on the top of our show notes page, as well as links to all of your stuff. Starting with your main website that you actually own, which is the most important in my opinion. But yes, you’re on Spotify, you’re on Bandcamp, you’re on YouTube, you’re on all of these things. Tick tock for now. Yeah, for now. Tick tock for now. Awesome. Is there anything else that you’d like to say, Christian?

Kristian: Not just, I appreciate you having me on and this is cool. And I would love to come to Burlington more often.

Becca: We’re going to hook you up. I’m going to work on that. I’m a big Trader Joe’s guy. And we have the one, right?

Kristian: Is there one down when you’re at? No, no. We come up here to go to Trader Joe’s.

Becca: Well, there you go. Perfect. We’ll get you with a band and you can make Trader Joe’s trip at the same time. Okay, thank you so much, Christian, for coming on the show. You’re very welcome.

It was really awesome talking with you today. The show notes are going to be at VermontTalks.com forward slash 53 for this episode. And that’s going to get you to everything that Christian’s got online. Thank you all for listening and have a great day. Thanks so much for listening to the end of the show. Subscribe to VermontTalks on your favorite podcasting platform. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all over the web. Contact Becca at VermontTalks.com if you’d like to be interviewed or if you know someone who should be. Thanks so much to Jason Baker for creating the show music. The views and opinions expressed by the guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of VermontTalks. Any content or statements provided by or a gaster of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, anyone or anything. And that’s what was new in the 802. Have a great day.