INTERVIEW: Navigating Music, Fans And Business In The Modern Era With Chase Atlantic
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with the talented members of Chase Atlantic, who share their insights into their music, approach to being a band, and staying true to their roots in an ever-evolving industry. Get a glimpse of their journey, their thoughts on the music scene, and a quickfire round of personal favorites and aspirations.
First and foremost, how are you?
Christian: Good. We explored all day in Utrecht. We played this venue in 2018. And we explored Utrecht and to me it’s a special place for us. This place is so gorgeous.
Mitchel: This whole place is just really special. Just walking around.
Clinton: For this run, we kind of did an undersell, smaller venues and stuff like that, so when we come back next time it’ll be a bigger venue. We’ll do small arenas. But this one, and the whole tour, was sold out in less than 20 minutes. This venue, judging by size, probably sold out in like a minute.
How have the shows been so far?
Mitchel: Amazing. We give 100 percent and we get 100 percent back, that’s the deal.
Christian: Fantastic. Reading and Leeds was nuts. We got to play Glasgow. We did Glasgow once, King Toots, so it was great to go back to Glasgow. We got to go back to Germany. We love Germany, playing in Cologne, and it was my birthday. And then, now we’re in beautiful Utrecht.
Mitchel: I think he’s being a little sarcastic. It’s not the funnest to play a show on your birthday because you want to enjoy your birthday, but it is good. The energy is good, though. They respect it, and it’s very sweet. It’s honestly very sweet that he’s even performing a show on his birthday. It shows our love for our family.
Clinton: The fans have been very responsive and very, very friendly. A lot of energy. They’re very sweet.
Mitchel: No fans, family. I don’t like the word fans. The family.
You mentioned the show here in 2018, with Sleeping With Sirens? How would you compare the shows?
Christian: That was our first introduction to all of Europe.
Mitchel: We were playing on that old little Dan Electro, the green Dan Electro. And we had an amplifier probably about the size of a water bottle.
Clinton: That was our first time here too, ever.
Mitchel: We loved it because we got to kind of like go out there and explore. We’d never seen shit before.
Christian: Such magical moments. I don’t believe we got a dressing room last time. We had to go back down by the bus.
You guys come across as very business savvy. How’s your approach towards being a band?
Mitchel: It’s like the universe. All these intercepting ideas and flow patterns that we have based upon our moods, based upon what we want to get out of a situation, what we want to do for ourselves, the music that we want to make for the people, for them to enjoy the kind of subjects we want to talk about. And then bringing the business side to that, it’s not like a pitch, but it’s also including being smart. We grew up as producers. We were all producing music together in our bedrooms. And we kind of fell into these roles on stage.
Christian: He’s so right. We didn’t pick ourselves roles. We fell into them naturally already being friends and then the business side of things, we just make sure we watch each other’s backs and we make sure that everything that’s happening we know about because too many times we’ve let things slide. So we’ve learned from our past mistakes.
Mitchel: And it’s a democracy as well, we keep a democracy, so that keeps peace. All these bands are fighting over shares.
Christian: It’s a funny democracy though, because it’s me against two brothers. No, I’m kidding.
Clinton: We’re very hands on. We’ve always been very hands on and we have final say and we are fortunate enough to be in deals where we can make our own decisions, we’ll pick songs that we want to release and everyone just kind of trusts us and we’re given that freedom, which is sick.
Christian: With the help of Joel and Ben [Madden].
Mitchel: They’ve given us a blueprint and stuff to work on. It’s all learning, it’s not critical, it’s not criticism. It’s business and it’s smart, it’s being savvy, it’s being aware of where you’re sitting at the moment, foundationally, and if you have your fucking roots set in the ground.
Christian: And then the pennies and the dollars will count themselves.
Mitchel: Yes, and as long as you’re ingrained, you’re good to go.
You guys have grown a ton throughout the last couple of years. Is that something that you keep in mind when you’re making new music? Where you have to maintain your creativity, but you also gotta keep the fans in mind. How do you guys deal with that?
Mitchel: You summed it all up. You keep the fans in mind, you keep the music in mind, you keep the audience in mind.
Christian: Clinton and Mitchell are always thinking about how is this gonna go on stage, how is it gonna look on stage, how is it gonna sound, is the audience gonna be able to sing it, can they dance, they think about everything.
Mitchel: That’s the live aspect.
Christian: Primarily, you wanna make things that are cool for you. You wanna be able to put it out and feel proud of yourself.
Mitchel: We’ve put out music that felt good for the culture. And it worked. So I think we have a good tap on it, so we should just keep following instinct. You’d be silly not to. But I don’t know. We just make a bunch of music and then we come out and play shows and we love it. It’s beautiful.
Clinton: When you’re sitting in a studio and you want to translate it to stage, I think about the BPM. With the older songs, the tempos maybe were a little bit slower, but as we kind of increased the tempo a little bit, just a little bit more, it’s become more confident, you can kind of hear it in the music, it’s a little faster now, but it flows.
Mitchel: We’re not keeping ourselves relevant, we’re just listening, we’re fans of music first. I think that’s important, to stay humble and stay fans of music because we just love music and we’re open to hearing different things and we know what works. We can listen to something so abstract and know that it’s not getting that many streams but we can still take little elements and add them to something that we know will work effectively within our music.
It’s interesting that you say that because we hear from many other artists that they lose being a fan of music.
Clinton: I kind of felt that for the last year and a bit.
Mitchel: It happens, I felt it too.
Christian: There’s definitely been years of music that haven’t been as good.
Mitchel: I fell back in love with it. I’ve fallen back in love with being a fan. I just opened myself up, You kind of develop this ego where you’re in competition with other music, but I think it’s important to let go of that ego and just appreciate it for what it is and not try and criticize and find out ways to make it better or think about how they could have fixed this or how they could have fixed that. It’s just about digesting it and listening and appreciating what they’ve tried to do as art. It’s the same thing as what we’re trying to do.
We got a rapid fire round now: Favourite European city to visit on tour?
Christian: Utrecht.
Mitchel: I mean, you have to say the city that you’re in.
Christian: But I’m not even kidding, Utrecht.
Mitchel: Yeah, we smoked some funny cigarettes.
Clinton: I actually have to agree with that. It’s actually our favourite.
Favourite song to play live?
All three: Beauty and Death.
What band do you listen to most in your spare time?
Mitchel: Skrillex, he’s an artist.
Christian: He’s the best producer of all time.
Mitchel: We appreciate good sound because, we want the production to be able to sit on its own.
Christian: The 1975.
Which artist would you still like to collaborate with?
Christian: The Weeknd. I’d say, honestly, for us right now, it would be The Weeknd. It just has to be a natural process. We don’t want to pay for the features.
Clinton: There’s some South American artists too, that would be cool.
Christian: The Latin market, for sure. Maybe not Bad Bunny.
Favorite ice cream flavor?
Christian: Coffee.
Mitchel: Cookie dough.
Clinton: Vegan cookies and cream.
What advice would you give a starting band in this time and day?
Mitchel: If you are a starting band in this era, most importantly, it’s important to find people that respect you and love you the same amount. If you give them energy, they give you that exact amount of energy back. That is the firm baseline. You cannot go anywhere in the music industry with turmoil. That is a fact. That is baseline. And then also find a sound. You can copy anything, you can copy any band. But then slowly kind of merge. It’ll progress. Just trust the system, don’t try and become an overnight success. It’s always gonna end poorly. Look at it as fractions and imagine you’re going up the steepest, most slowly inclining ramp in the whole entire world. And just keep going. Don’t lose focus, don’t lose love. Don’t ever stop trying new things. Don’t ever stop being confident in yourself and don’t ever stop giving it everything.
