- [Bret Alexander] A guy said to me, once, it was a radio guy, and he said, if you sell records, you get to keep making them.

Sounds simple, you know, records don't sell much these days, but it's kind of like, I would say, you know, if you have fans, if you have people that are interested in what you do, and they keep coming to see you play, and they keep consuming what you put out, then you're gonna get to keep putting things out.

You're gonna get to keep doing things.

And you can't look at it like, and that's your indicator.

Your indicator is a network growing, you know, is there a community growing?

Part of my real career started with, I got an internship at a recording studio, close to where I went to school.

Professional music career, my first real job.

Music business job.

Was actually in a recording studio.

I was in college, and I found a independent study course where I could intern in a recording studio.

You know, the two hour window I walked in there, they got an offer to build a studio for Whitney Houston.

We need somebody to run this place, and I just went... (laughing) and that was my one and only interview, and I didn't make it two.

Yeah, I mean the Badlee's actually connected to this, my first studio job, which was at a studio called Susquehanna Sound, at the time.

The Badlees came in, you know, Mid-Atlantic region.

We had a really good fan base and, and got a record deal.

And, you know, did all sorts of touring US, Canada, a little bit of stuff overseas.

And, you know, then ended up joining subsequent records, at Bearsville and, Woodstock New York with Legendary Place.

And also probably an even more notorious place, we did part of our second record, that was Sound City, which is in Van Nuys.

- If we're going to bring this in, in the first B section or not, I don't know if that affects, you know, the way you're creating the whole part.

- Well, the only problem, we're all leads in, this next one, I'll leave the first piece of action.

- [Bret Alexander] And that was the home of Nirvana, 'Nevermind,' a lot of the Tom Petty records, Fleetwood Mac.

And we ended up doing a lot of recording there.

So yeah, new experience, we made the rounds.

We started a recording studio called saturation acres, which still exists today.

♪ I hear you whisper ♪ ♪ In the wind... ♪ And, you know, from there we had tons of great artists.

We did several albums there with the Badlees.

We, did all the, you know, the early stuff, the genesis of the band Breaking Benjamin, which is a really big band, from the Northeast Pennsylvania area.

Yeah, I mean, I had a, I ended out a little detour.

I ended up getting a kidney transplant in February.

Yeah, that was like the first time in over, probably 35 years that I wasn't playing.

Well my main activities right now, are getting back out into the live scene, on a normal year from, you know, up to 2019, I would play probably 250, 300 shows a year.

Studio stuffs, I have a handful of projects.

I have kind of like accomplishing projects, and like, remakes of a bunch of old songs that I've been working on for a while.

I have to finish that.

I would say, you know, if you have fans, if you have people that are interested in what you do and they keep coming to see you play, and they keep consuming what you put out, then you're gonna get to keep putting things out, you're gonna get to keep doing things.

And you can't look at it like, and that's your indicator, your indicator is, is a network growing, you know, is there a community growing?

If it's not growing, you can't just sit there and say "they don't get it".

You know what I mean?

And I'm this best kept secret.

I think at some point you gotta make some adjustments, and you have to, you know, you gotta find what works for you.

♪ Resplendent in Dignity ♪ ♪ Angeline is coming home ♪ ♪ Resplendent in Dignity ♪ ♪ Angeline is coming home ♪