There are few things we love more than supporting Indie bands here on the Never A Phase Network. Our guest correspondent Shannon Sweeney caught up with Megan Simon, the lead singer of New Hampshire's Megan From Work
Interview
Shannon sits down with Megan From Work
What does being a smaller or independent band actually look like behind the scenes right now? What are you doing yourselves that fans might assume a label, manager, or team handles?
Behind the scenes, it looks like putting lodging and gas on credit cards while on the road and hoping that the shows make enough money to be able to pay yourself back. Without a label, in order to fund our next record, I’m applying for a personal loan, again hoping that I’ll be able to pay myself back by playing out and selling merch. It’s not glamorous or necessarily fun to talk about, but the reality of trying to get a DIY band off the ground is a lot like trying to get a small business off the ground. No one is making money yet, and we’re all investing a lot of time and cash to make it happen, but I’m personally happy to do so because I believe in the project and the band so much. At the end of the day, this is my Plan A, so I want to give it my best honest shot.
For someone discovering you for the first time, who are you as a band and what do you want people to understand about you beyond your sound?
As a band, we are a five piece consisting of guys that love to play loud fast fun music. Our DNA is a combination of punk, indie rock, and pop music, but beyond our sound, we’re all just regular working class aging rockers. I’m an almost-full-time server, and this project is completely self-funded and self-managed…for now :)
Do you feel like bands are expected to be content creators now as much as musicians? How do you balance writing, rehearsing and touring with constantly needing something to post?
I think you do have to have some kind of relationship with social media in order to get your work heard. I balance it by only posting things that genuinely feel like myself and like how I want to present in the world. I also think that it’s ok to ramp it up around your releases and maybe hang back and do the work in silence when it’s more of a sowing season. Right now, we are writing our next album and practicing every week, so I’m posting a bit of the process without worrying about being too promotional because I don’t feel like there’s anything to promote quite yet ha. But the audience that we have garnered may want to get a look into how things are moving along, so I keep that in mind. I also don’t want to reveal too much and spoil the record! It is definitely a fine line.
Has social media changed the way you think about making music? Do you ever catch yourselves thinking about what will work on TikTok, Instagram, or an algorithm while you’re creating?
I think musicians have to write music for themselves first and foremost. All of my songs are typically written from a line or groups of melodies that pop into my head, and I’m not thinking about Instagram at all when I sit at the guitar to get it all out. The only thing I do take into consideration is the length of the intro as I do think attention spans have gotten shorter as a result of social media. I like to get right into the action in the hopes that it catches someone upon first listen.
How do you feel about AI becoming more common in music and the scene, whether that’s artwork, videos, songwriting, promotion, or even music itself? Is there a line where it stops being a useful tool and starts taking something away from the art?
If I can be so bold - I think that it’s lazy, uninspired, and completely goes against the artistry and even the whole point of creating music and art.
I have such a high level of respect and admiration for the visual component of releasing music, and the music community is built by and made up of real people with real talents in their respective craft. It is always worth it to hire photographers, mixed media artists, videographers and any other creatives in order to help express and emphasize the themes of your work. These relationships will always make your work better and create both companionship and continued work for those involved in the project. The line where it starts taking away from the art is the initial one. It is ok to be bad at things, you can be bad at music or art, and you likely will be at first, but if you want to be a creative person, you have to actually create things yourself. I could write an essay on this lol.
For a smaller band where money and time are already limited, does AI feel different than it might for a major artist with a huge budget? Could you see it genuinely helping independent musicians, or do the same concerns still apply?
No, I don’t consider it to be a useful tool for independent artists at all. There are so many free tools online and thousands of resources to learn how to use them in order to make flyers or edit photos. Take the extra step, and you might be pleasantly surprised with what you can come up with on your own :)
What’s the hardest part about touring at your level that people in the audience probably never see? And what makes you keep doing it anyway?
It’s definitely the cost around it, which even bigger artists are talking about. We can’t afford more than a mini van and rely on gear sharing in every town, which can be a challenge. We’re also unable to bring a photographer or videographer at this stage, so it’s hard to document the experience as well. What makes me do it anyway is that it’s my favorite thing in the world. I have an amazing group of friends in the band, so the 4-5 hour car rides, exploring cities, sharing meals, ripping gigs, and sharing hotel rooms are all fun experiences. Meeting new bands and the people who go to their shows on the road is also so fulfilling. Every tour feels like a hero’s journey as corny as it sounds, but it feels really good to be out there.
Do you think it’s harder for a genuinely great band to break through now because there’s so much content competing for people’s attention or has the internet actually made discovery easier?
I think it goes both ways! It’s really hard to cut through and make a real impact. Discovery is easier if people are actively looking to discover, but 1-2 hours deep in a scrolling session, I’m not sure how badly someone is digging around for their new favorite band. Breaking through now seems to be done by playing live on tours supporting larger artists and being shown to new listeners through playlists on their respective streaming platforms.
What does “making it” look like to you now? Is it signing to a label, touring full-time, building a loyal community, making enough money to keep creating or something else entirely?
Making it feels like so many different things to me now. If I had to boil it down, I would say it’s the ability to have the time and funding to create new work and tour it feels like making it, which I do feel like I currently have and am grateful for. It might not be someone else’s definition since we all still have day jobs, but the music is getting made, and the shows are being played. Even if it’s just locally, looking out into the crowd and seeing people sing along and know the words feels like making it to me too.
What do you wish people who care about this scene would do more of to support smaller bands? Buy merch? Show up for the opener? Share music? Actually listen to a full record?
I think the best thing you can do to support smaller bands is to try to get the word out to the people in your network. Discovery is everything to an artist now; they can be making music that tons of people might fall in love with, but if it never falls on those ears, it goes nowhere. In practice, this can look like reposting an artist’s content, bringing a few friends out to their local shows with you, wearing their merch in public, and adding their songs to your playlists so the algorithm knows where to sort and push them.
Daisy Chain Fest recently put together a lineup made up entirely of women performers. What do you think about festivals intentionally creating spaces like that for women in alternative music?
I think it’s fantastic. Book More Women is an organization that breaks down the data from music festivals with the percentages of female, non-binary, and trans artists on the lineup, and it’s consistently shocking. There is no shortage of bands and artists that make up those groups, and the more their voices are represented, the more likely someone else who sees themself on that kind of stage might pick up a guitar and decide to take the dive into creating music of their own. It’s very inspiring.
Do you think women still have to work harder to be taken seriously in punk/emo/alternative music, or have you seen that change during your time as a band?
I’ve definitely seen it change in the time that I’ve been making music in bands, mostly within the scene itself. Other artists seem to book and have respect for bands with women in them, but I do still see and as a frequently femme presenting person experience weirdness from old school sound guys, promoters, and the like. In one of my previous bands, I was in the green room and someone asked “How do you know the guys?” which is very funny to look back on now.
How do you feel about the term “female-fronted band”? Does it help people discover bands with women in them, or does it sometimes feel like you’re being put into a separate category?
Eh, I don’t love it, but at the same time, if someone is especially into music written in the female voice, I understand the label to a degree. I don’t think the modifier is needed, and it’s certainly not a genre because there are hundreds of female-fronted bands that sound nothing alike, but language evolves, and I hope we find a way to distance ourselves from using that as a category of music. If it’s done in a “bands that feature women” kind of way, I think that’s positive for discovery.
There’s often a conversation about representation on festival lineups, but what about behind the scenes? Do you think enough attention is being paid to women working as producers, engineers, photographers, tour crew, promoters, and other roles within the scene?
I think that’s growing and changing as well. Most behind the scenes positions aren’t given any kind of love in major music magazines and publications, but through social media, I’ve found so many women in those fields that are getting work and the recognition they deserve.
What women in music made you feel like there was a place for you in this scene and are there newer women or female-fronted bands you think people should be paying attention to now?
As a genderfluid person, I honestly never felt like I didn’t have a place in the scene, maybe that’s kind of a bravado thing, but looking back at the male-fronted (hehe) bands I grew up on, it was regularly a “do I want them or do I want to be them” kind of situation. But some women I look up to and take a lot of inspiration from are Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, Mitski, Frances Quinlan of Hop Along, and Lana Del Rey (my biological mother). People should be paying attention to Um Jennifer?, Wetsuit, Little Low, Cape Crush, and Isadora Drago <3
Listen to more from Megan From Work here