AUSTIN — How does a band go from getting rejected for club gigs in its home base to playing venues around the world and scoring a top-10 album in about six years? According to Sam Harris of X Ambassadors, it's a combination of perseverance (playing any and all gigs available), connections (people who like you may help you later) and remembering who's really important.
“You work for the fans. That’s it," Harris said Friday during a panel presentation at the South By Southwest Music festival. "Obviously the music has to come from a personal place … but at the end of the day, these fans are the ones that are doing everything for you.”
The session, called "From Dive Bars to the Billboard Charts," looked at one band's journey to success and included speakers who handle management, recording, touring and song publishing. X Ambassadors' debut album, VHS, on Interscope Records, was released last year and has reached No. 7 on the Billboard album chart and spawned the radio hit Renegades.
The band "went from zero to 20 (mph), and then it went from 20 to 120," said Robbie Lloyd of Interscope.
Some more interesting facts about X Ambassadors' rise:
In the Pocket: Singer Harris started playing in a band with his friend and X Ambassadors guitarist Noah Feldshuh when they were in seventh grade in Ithaca, N.Y. “We were called Pocket, after Hot Pockets, because we loved to eat Hot Pockets during practice.” Sam's brother Casey, who was born blind, joined on keyboards, and the eventual X Ambassadors' lineup was completed much later when Adam Levin, a college friend, was added on drums.
New 'management': The band kept getting rejected for club gigs in Brooklyn, where the members later lived, but Harris came up with a clever tactic to get break through: He created a fake manager to give the band more credibility. He learned the lingo of managers, created a new email account and found that clubs were more responsive to "Paul Lewis." (Later, when X Ambassadors signed on with manager Seth Kallen, club owners and bookers would ask what happened to Paul.)
Getting credit: When the band recorded its second self-funded EP, it had to do so on credit with a promise to pay back the more than $30,000 bill as soon as it was making money. “We just really kind of blindly went into it thinking, 'Oh yeah, we’ll eventually be able to pay this off because we’re good enough.'”
TV to online to radio: The band's first break came in February 2012, when Litost, a song from the EP, was used in an episode of One Tree Hill. Fashion designer Jac Vanek heard it on the show and put it on a Spotify playlist, where it was discovered by a radio station in Norfolk, Va., which started playing the song. This was when the band still was without a record contract. Yet it became the top song at 96X.
Making friends: Harris learned an important lesson about the power of connections when a fans who often attended the free shows when it couldn't get booked in clubs later ended up working in the music business and helped lead X Ambassadors to Kallen. “The simplest and smallest connections, you never know what’s going to come of those," Harris said.
No ceiling: Greg Johnson of Songs Publishing said he knew from the moment he heard X Ambassadors that the band was poised for success. "I think he (Harris) laughed at me because he thought it was a cheesy thing to say, but I said, 'You guys belong in arenas. You’re an arena rock band, you just don’t know it yet.'” Agent David Galea had a similar reaction when he saw the band play a small show. “This is an arena band," he said. "They’re playing in front of 50 people at Brooklyn Bowl right now, but this is an arena band.”
Work ethic: Harris learned about hard work opening for Local H on a club tour. He remembers that singer Scott Lucas would get the crowd so worked up during shows that he could crowdsurf all the way to the back of a club ... and then immediately start working the merch table.
Works well with others: The band has opened for a variety of bands, such as Imagine Dragons, Jimmy Eat World and Panic At The Disco!, on purpose. “I’m a big believer in creating a lane for a band," Galea said. But “the lane (for X Ambassadors) is gonna be an eight-lane highway. Let’s not limit ourselves to we’re only gonna play with these kinds of bands.” Harris said that helped the band see their fan base differently than then first may have imagined. “You never know what your fan base is going to be. You can’t curate that.”
Pay to play: Another big break for the band came within the past two years, when two songs were used in commercials: Jungle in a Beats by Dre ad, and Renegades in a spot for Jeep. Kallen said it took years, but the work the band did eventually paid off. "The business is built on no. That’s the sad part," he said. "It’s just the land of discouragement. But there’s that amazing feeling you get when you get that yes. ... If you wanted it easy, go work at a library and just shelve books.”
