Max Oakland - Making Alternative Rock and Retro Games - The Lorenzo's Music Podcast (Transcript)
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Tom Ray: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Lorenzo’s Music Podcast. I’m Tom, and this is a show where I talk with musicians. I talk to people who create things for musicians, and a lot of the time with a skew on the open source and Creative Commons and federated realm population. But today, I am just talking to a musician that I got curious about. I went down a rabbit hole and I was like, I think I’m just going to ask them to come on the show and tell me more about what they do. So why don’t you tell the people who you are and what it is you do?
Max Oakland: Hi, yeah, I’m Max Oakland. I make alternative rock, and other genres, and also make video games, mostly retro pixel art. I’ve been making, Game Boy games for a little bit, so that’s basically what I’m focusing on lately. But I’m also thinking a lot about trying to make games for other systems and stuff like that.
Tom Ray: Yeah. And that is what led me down the rabbit hole was not only. So I want to say I’ve been trying to remember exactly how I, first found out about. You heard your music. I want to say it is either. I heard you on the Indie Beat TV live streaming channel.
Max Oakland: That’s cool. So I wondered if that would.
Tom Ray: So you were on that? That’s what I was trying to remember. I was like, is that where I heard it? I’m pretty sure it is. But with you knowing what it is, then that’s probably how I first heard about you. Yeah. Okay. And, do you remember how you got on that? Were you contacted for it? Did you submit to it?
Max Oakland: I submitted to it.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: I think I found out about it. Someone was either posting about it on sky or Mastodon or something like that.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: It’s like, oh, that’s a cool idea. I. Yeah, it’s really cool. I don’t know if your listeners know what it is. What it’s like, almost like a MTV or something that’s streaming all the time with, you know, indie music. So it’s a pretty cool thing. And, I submitted some of my music because I. I’ve made some animations. Animation is kind of a hobby for me. so I thought it would be visually interesting to put it on there.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: Yeah. All right.
Tom Ray: And then. So it is, just for people who you were mentioning it, it is indie or theindiebeat TV, and it’s just a 247 streaming channel. And so I think what happened was, is I was watching The. They have a new Music Friday sort of event that they do where new videos that got added to the rotation. They will focus on all those for like a good couple hours. They open up the chat and everything and people talk about it. And I want to say, I saw that and it must have been animation because I was like, oh, I want to go listen to the music and see if he has any more animation. Because I’m also an animator. I draw web comics and do animation and stuff like that. So I was. Oh, another musician that does cartoons
Tom Ray: And then before. Okay, before we get going into that, I. I forgot to ask, where are you located right now? Where are you in the world?
Max Oakland: I live in Los Angeles, California.
Tom Ray: Okay. I’m in Madison, Wisconsin. So I’m in the Midwest.
Max Oakland: Okay. I am from the Midwest, Illinois.
Tom Ray: Oh, are you really?
Max Oakland: We’re in Illinois, Western Illinois, just rural, small towns. and I have spent some time in Chicago and also Iowa before I moved here. So I’ve explored a good bit of the Midwest.
Tom Ray: Actually.
Max Oakland: I’d like to explore Detroit more. I know some people from there and they’re. It seems like some really creative artists and musicians and stuff live there. So I’d love to see what that’s like.
Tom Ray: I don’t think I’ve ever been to Detroit, but I haven’t been very. I’ve. I’ve rarely gone east as it is anyway. I think I went to New York once and it was really just to play a show when it was at night. And then we moved down to Philadelphia the next day, so I didn’t even get to stay there. Oh yeah?
Max Oakland: Yeah. Ah. And actually somebody just told me about a band from Philadelphia that I want to check out called like Feeble Horse. Let me look it up. I don’t have my phone.
Tom Ray: It’s all right.
Max Oakland: I don’t know, but they sound interesting. So I’m going to be exploring their music scene a little bit through that.
Tom Ray: Okay. And now when I saw your video, I went and checked out your stuff and then went, of course saw the music that you had and you have a release right now. Actually several versions of the release right now that’s called Kim Gordon. Tell me about your latest release.
Max Oakland: Okay, yeah, so several releases because I like to do remixes, like, you know how you’ll find the slowed and reverb version and stuff like that of songs. So I thought it would be cool to do that myself. But, Kim Gordon sounds very alternative rock, 90s inspired, which is part of the reason Why I named it Kim Gordon because it reminded me of Sonic Youth. And a song called because just like the chord progression that it opens with, I always liked and thought it was a cool chord progression. And so I was just thinking about,
Max Oakland: Originally it was called Kim Gordon Inspires Me. But I just shortened it. It was just kind of like, you know how sometimes you write a song and maybe at that time I hadn’t recorded lyrics or anything. So you just kind of like come up with a name when you save it so that you can go back to it and you know, a lot of the time you’ll change it. But I liked it. I thought it was interesting. And also kind of a reference to how Sonic Youth would sometimes name songs or albums or side projects after artists they were admiring or just thinking about. Kind of reminds me of. There was this song of like Ken Gordon and, Something Hand Cream. And apparently it was really supposed to be Mariah Carey. This was one of Sonic Youth songs, Mariah Carey and the Something like. Or Arthur Hand Cream. And But they had to change it because of Mariah Carey’s lawyer or something.
Tom Ray: Yeah, I would imagine that that would be the case.
Max Oakland: So, yeah, I was kind of like, I wonder if Kim Gordon would be annoyed having a name named after her. But then they. She also did that, so I would hope not. I haven’t been contacted by any lawyers yet, so.
Tom Ray: That’s right, exactly. That’s. That’s always the way to go. It’s like, let’s just assume they’re cool about it and then we’ll figure it out later. I always think that too, in the sense where, if something does happen with it, I would want to capitalize living hell out of it. You know, like, use that before changing it. Like really make a fuss. Like, oh, no. Even though you were going, I’ll totally change it if they say something anyway. But it’s like, let’s make it sound like I went down fighting just to get some publicity out of it.
Max Oakland: Yeah, that would be a good way to get simple publicity.
Tom Ray: Right, exactly. So now you, you, play all the instruments. Like you. The song is like a. You’re a solo musician, correct?
Max Oakland: Yes and no. I do a lot of solo stuff and that recording, is all me. But I actually, I’m in a band too. We play live and we play live versions of those songs that I have online and, we play. So far we’ve just mainly played about. Around LA and like the LA area. But I’d like to expand that, and anyway, I’m working on recording with them.
Tom Ray: all right.
Max Oakland: In fact, I’ve recorded some additional instrumentation from them for like a future release of that song. Like when it goes on an album, it’ll have like a more finished final album version and then it will have them on it. So yeah, I’ve been trying to do that more and more. It’s been really cool. I really love collaborating and playing with other musicians.
Tom Ray: So how many people would that be that you’re that are in the band right now?
Max Oakland: It’s four, including me. But I’m thinking it would be cool to have maybe like some somebody who plays interesting and weird sounding electronic seths or something like that because. Okay, I have that in my recordings for the most part. And I think that it would be cool to incorporate that into the live thing because right now my live show sounds very different from my recordings. I feel like my recordings are really over produced and like polished and I feel like live were more like raw and like, I mean I still try to be polished in a live sense, but like sound more like grunge or Shoe gaze or something like that. Live where it’s recorded, I feel like we sound a little bit more like Gorillaz or something.
Tom Ray: Okay. You sound like an animated an.
Max Oakland: So it’s like the production value of having like a lot of different instrumentation and stuff. Whereas live, it’s more stripped down to be more a rock sounding band.
Max Oakland: Kim Gordon. I would say one of the reasons why I put that song out recently is because it’s sounds a lot more like our live stuff. It has like alternative rock forward sound.
Tom Ray: Now you said you wanted to do some recording with that band. What is your recording setup or what, what is your plan? Do you plan on going into a studio, recording it yourself? Like how are you doing that type of stuff?
Max Oakland: So we’ve been recording and I, you know, record on my computer and my friend who plays guitar in the band, Jake, recently moved to a place where he has a space for like a garage where we can record and play music. And really all the band members of my band, we all have recorded our own music. So I’ve been recording with Sammy who plays bass in the band. actually recently did like the lead vocals for 12 songs in one day, which was just like a need to get this done type of thing. And he got cool microphone that I figured, like I’ve been using a more lo fi shure SM57 microphone because I heard that was the one to get if you only have one. So I’ve had it for a long time.
Max Oakland: And I’ve just been like overwhelmed by the options of what to get next. So anyway, I was like we should just try to do this. And with his like higher quality microphone I think it’ll have a good contrast between that and the background vocals which will have a more lo fi sound. So. Okay. It’ll be cool.
Tom Ray: What DAW are you using to record it?
Max Oakland: I use Logic.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: a lot of us use Logic, one of us uses Pro Tools and I think that’s it.
Tom Ray: All right.
Max Oakland: But yeah, like we were talking about with like Linux and the DAW on there, I’m really interested to try that out and see how that works because I’m very interested in Open Source software myself. I think it’s kind of like the necessary future of computing because you know, the mainstream software continues to get more locked down but also like lower quality. So I think at some point Linux is actually gonna outpace the commercial software just because of insertification. At that point it will be probably a really good thing, you know, because Open Source is a really good concept. Just fundamentally the concept of like the sharing and the sharing of work.
Max Oakland: And I really think that’s really cool. And the fact that you can fork it and create your own version if you want to improve something that’s actually a dream of mine personally is to create like a Linux distro that specifically has like an interface that I think is designed for maximum usability.
Tom Ray: Well that is something that people do a lot. That is something that can be done. So I know that I’ve seen many custom distros over the years. I do know a lot of it does, some of them stick around, some don’t. Because some people are like I just was trying it or they did something and they decided not to keep working on it. Stuff like that. And with the sharing thing that you’re talking about too I actually want to ask you about. So now here is where when I was searching out your music I saw the video and searched yourself, went to your website and saw that along with the animations you had, the video games as you mentioned in the beginning. Now with a lot of yours you release through Itch.io or Itch IO I never know which way you’re supposed to say it. Like do you say it Itch IO? Do you say Itch IO?
Max Oakland: Second guessing myself.
Tom Ray: I know, I always do too. That’s why I’m asking. I’m like, let me ask somebody else because I know how I’m gonna say it. but a lot of your games around there, you have a new release right now that is called, what is it? Wink in the Broken Robot. Correct.
Max Oakland: Yeah.
Tom Ray: Okay. And so you share those on Itch IO and you also put other games on there. Now, first of all, tell me about how you got started in the whole making this. These games, and I’m assuming making the music for them too. Okay.
Max Oakland: Yeah. Actually, I’ve been making games since I was in junior high. I always had like a musical background. Like, I was talked into doing chorus and I took piano lessons. And, but I actually wasn’t really making music. I was making video games first. And then, you know, really the way it started was like, in grade school, my friends and I would make up our own video games by drawing them on paper. And like, mostly for me it was ripoffs of Mario games with like, some enemies that were slightly different or new enemies. And then, like, we would put ourselves in as the characters, of course. So, yeah, I was doing that for a long time using Game Maker
Tom Ray: and you were using Game Maker. Okay. All right.
Max Oakland: That was the original way I started doing it. And, really I got into music because I needed music for my games and getting it from other people was a little. Aww. It was just not really working that well. So I thought, why not try doing it myself?
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: yeah, it was rough at first. M. Eventually I got GarageBand and it became a little easier.
Tom Ray: And then were you doing like more normal analog audio or, music first or were you trying to make eight bit music? Like, how were. How were you making. Because I know you do both. You’ve done both analog and 8 bit background music. So.
Max Oakland: Yeah. So originally when I was making games with Game Maker, I didn’t exactly have like a, specific concept, like I’m making retro games or something like that.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: I liked retro games, so they kind of looked like that and it was more reasonable, I think. Like, you know, I started making the graphics in Microsoft Paint, so, you know, that was reachable to do it. So. But I didn’t really even have a concept of retro games. so I wasn’t trying to make eight bit sounding music per se. I was really mostly, especially at first just using like GarageBand loops, which are mostly like recordings of real analog instruments or something. Yeah, around that time I started getting more into analog stuff actually, because I. That’s when I started wanting to really write songs, learn to play instruments, specifically guitar and actually like really make music in the real world. So I kind of started more digital and then became more analog.
Tom Ray: Okay. All right. And now the on your YouTube channel you even have a walkthrough of the game if people want to check it out, of the game that you’re doing for that. So tell me about you said you originally started with Game Maker. How did you create this game that you have now? Wink and Robot.
Max Oakland: So using an application called Game Boy Studio which came out, oh around this time.
Tom Ray: Never heard of that. Okay.
Max Oakland: That’s really cool software. It’s very beginner friendly too. So it’s one of the better programs to start making games in, which is interesting. I just think the creator Chris Maltby is really good at user interface design compared to a lot of other software that’s a lot more complex and actually Game Boy Studio is open source and some people have made forks of it to compile onto different systems. Which is one of the reasons why I’m thinking about what system I would like to use in the future. I think there’s going to be one that makes Genesis games which would be pretty cool. But to answer your question, I was working on a version a week game well like with that character in that world in Game Maker. And ah, at that time I was just kind of like trying to get my stuff out there. So I had this brief period where I was doing these weekend projects where I would use like an unusual game engine to make a game. So I, and like the goal was to finish it in one weekend and just put it out. So I did one.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: Yeah. And they were just small fun little games. And I only actually made one because the first one was I’m a cat now I guess. And I made that in Mozi which is like, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Bitsy. It’s a game development like it’s through the web browser and it’s incredibly simple. It’s like the most bare bones thing you can possibly imagine and basically has almost very little game logic. The concept is mostly around creating like spaces. People can walk around and interact with characters and tell stories. Very little color, very little animation and that simplicity made it very popular. So it’s been a lot of games have been made with it. But I decided to do one in Mozi which was I think inspired by that but had a little bit more features and flexibility. So I thought it would be cool to make A game in it. So I made this game where you’re a cat and walking around this very, very strange, surreal world solving small puzzles and stuff like that. And that was actually one of the most popular games I had actually. Really it was the most popular game I had made up to that point. And so I was like, okay, well I’ll just keep doing this cool project, like different things. So the next one was gonna be a demake of my Wink game that I was making for like Mac and PC and stuff in Game Maker. And I had known about Game Boy Studio for a little bit, but the first version was only capable of making top down Zelda like games in black and white. And I wasn’t incredibly interested in doing that because I’m more into platformers and that’s what I especially wanted to do at that time. So. But then right around like that week when I was looking for a new project, the version 2 beta had been announced. So you could make games in color
Tom Ray: and it wasn’t even color. I didn’t know that. Okay. Yeah, they were really doing it more like Game Boy. Okay. Not like even Game Boy, that they were just doing old Game Boy.
Max Oakland: Exactly.
Tom Ray: okay.
Max Oakland: It really does create Game Boy ROMs. These run on real Game Boy hardware. I’ve had cartridges made.
Tom Ray: Yeah, you have cartridges for sale. I’ve seen that, yeah.
Max Oakland: And they run on the real Game Boy. It also runs on the black and white version, but it’s also in color. It’s like one of those dual mode cartridges.
Tom Ray: So do you buy the cartridge and you just program it in like how do you actually get yourself a cartridge?
Max Oakland: Well, there are companies that will make them and you can. The way I originally was doing it was you can buy like bootleg games on AliExpress or something for pretty cheap.
Max Oakland: They make them as like bootlegs of real Nintendo games and stuff. But then you can rewrite the game. The ROM cartridge on it, it’s actually flash memory. So that was how I did it for testing. And then I was thinking maybe that’s what I would do. But then I found out about. Or there were created companies. I mean this is called Homebrew and it’s actually been going on for a while. there are companies that make like Nintendo, like nes, ah, Homebrew cartridges and really now like all the systems I think. But at that time I don’t know if it was new or what because it took a little bit for me to realize it was possible to like just like get a Bunch of them made by one company, right? Yeah, Yeah.
Tom Ray: I mean, it’s kind of like if you wanted to get CDs or tapes or LPs made, I mean, there’s got to be somebody out there who, like, will mass produce it. I mean, if there’s a way to make. Make money off of it, somebody’s got to be producing it. So, you know.
Max Oakland: Yeah. Ah.
Tom Ray: And when you. Well, when you were making the Wink game. Because I know before, you know, like with the I’m a cat now, or I guess I’m a cat now one or you have other ones where they were kind of, they did a thing. But with the Wink game, there’s an actual, like, adventure. Did you storyboard this out? So as a. I asked because I have an idea for something I’m doing right now that is I’m trying to make into a, limited edition comic series. And I’m like, oh, it would be interesting to try and do this as a game as well and actually have different plot points, be puzzles, you know, kind of make it more like a Secret of Monkey island type of thing. and yeah, and I love that game. And so I guess I’m curious to know how you laid it out. How did you did. How did you make it so that, like the walkthrough you did? Okay, you do this, then you do this, then you do this. Like, what was your. What was your execution of making this the actual timeline of the game?
Max Oakland: So one thing I would like to say is you can actually play the game in almost any order.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: Nine worlds. You have to play the first one, and then it drops you onto an overworld map, kind of like a, Link’s awakening or something. And then from there you can go to any of the worlds if you can find them. So it was inspired by how the original Zelda game was an open world game, basically. Like you could.
Tom Ray: And it reminds me of the Zelda game. I do. I did notice that I get the homage. Yeah.
Max Oakland: Yeah. So, and then from there you go into these worlds and those worlds have platformer levels. So, But way it came together was I did not storyboard it. I really kind of just took it one piece at a time. And I found that that really works best for me. I feel like this.
Tom Ray: Filming it in camera, like you just kind of shoot the movie like as you’re going, like, okay, what are we going to do this time? Let’s do this. And you just kind of shoot it as it goes along.
Max Oakland: Yeah. And, you know, and maybe you could edit it later because I definitely did a lot of editing, which.
Tom Ray: Oh, of course.
Max Oakland: a lot of things. Like, players really seemed to want to know what the point of the game was before playing it. Whereas I’m more like, don’t give me a lot of exposition before I start the game because it’s going to be boring. I just want to play it.
Tom Ray: No final fantasy, like 10 minutes of intro before playing. Thing here.
Max Oakland: Played a ton of RPGs.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Max Oakland: I have played Earthbound though, which is cool and I think golden sun, but yeah, okay, so you had
Tom Ray: to explain it for the people because otherwise they’d be like, why should I play this game? Is what you’re getting at?
Max Oakland: Pretty much. Yeah. A lot of people definitely wanted that. So. But that all kind of came together after originally, like when I first started making this game, it really was supposed to be a demake and I was like, I don’t really know. So I, I knew what the story of the, game this was a demake of, which was like this factory started spilling out all sorts of sludge and it was. It. You need to turn it off. So. But as I created this game, I wasn’t really sure if that was what I was going to do, if I was going to make it like, exactly go along the same lines or if I was going to make it more like a side story. Eventually I decided I was going to make it a sequel. So this takes place after that unfinished game. so. Because at the time my, my thought was I’m obviously going to go back and finish that one, but I actually feel like I learned so much from making this game. Like, having to use the limits of the software and stuff made me learn so much. And all the player testing and like, just the limitations caused a lot of streamlining to the level design and stuff. So I feel like if I did go back to that, I would basically have to completely recreate the whole game. So I think I’m probably just not gonna do that. And I’ll probably maybe like take pieces of the concept or like some level designs, because there are definitely some level designs I’m really proud of in that game. But overall it’s like a very unpolished version of what I ended up with.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: Like the whole world and stuff and the characters, because there are some, similar characters, some similar enemies and stuff. But like, even the design of Wink is totally different and really kind of weird to look at now just because,
Tom Ray: you know, more coming out of it than you did going in that.
Max Oakland: And I really had to like, when the version of Game Boy Studio I was using, you could only have 16 by 16 pixel sprites, so.
Tom Ray: Oh, right.
Max Oakland: Cram the sprite character into 16 by 16 pixels which, you know, changed the way it was designed and
Tom Ray: Right.
Max Oakland: I think improved it a lot.
Tom Ray: Okay. And well then what do you. Do you have plans for another game or going beyond this one or what are. What are you going to do going forward?
Max Oakland: I want to do a sequel because newer versions of the software have come out with some really amazing capabilities. So.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: I’m really excited to make a game that just pushes the necks of the Game Boy color because it’s not going to be available on the black and white this time because the Game Boy color has like some capabilities that like higher memory. I think it has twice as much memory for storage of graphics, processors twice as fast. But when you do that, you can’t also make it work on the black and white Game Boy without a lot of issues. So I just decided I’m gonna make the first one for both and then this one, you know, kind of like in real life that happened where they went from the black and white to the dual mode to the color only as technology progressed. So, But yes, I have a lot of ideas for a sequel. I’ve been really excited to work on a sequel and I actually do have a concept of a story before making the game, which with this wink in the Broken Robot game, it was all just kind of like feeling it out. And really the concept for the story
Max Oakland: came from a song. Like I wrote a song called Broken Robot for the game because I was experimenting with the software because making music for 8 bit systems is very different from using like a daw. It’s called tracker software and it usually is just like a roll vertically and then okay, channels and stuff.
Tom Ray: It’s very like a rainfall thing or a waterfall, I think. Yeah.
Max Oakland: So it took a lot of experimentation to learn that software and find out which software was even good to use because they’re in that space. There’s a lot of software that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1995 or even earlier. Like some of it looks like it’s basically.
Tom Ray: Why would they. Perfection. Why would they improve on perfection?
Max Oakland: Yeah, I mean they. It’s a niche and you know, a lot of the people who do that are so used to the software, they don’t really want it to change. So it’s interesting, right?
Tom Ray: Yes, exactly.
Max Oakland: I come in with a new. Like, I’m a new person, and I have a lot of expectations from software that is more mainstream. And so it was a learning experience. But there is one called openmpt that is a good combination of the two.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Max Oakland: And that’s what I ended up using.
Tom Ray: Nice. And I actually saw that you released that under the, I want to say the band name, called Jun. Ah.
Max Oakland: What was it?
Tom Ray: In the Junipers. Yeah.
Max Oakland: So in the Junipers isn’t exactly a band name. It’s more like a somewhat collective. There have been people who. You know. Originally, it was kind of like a group thing where we were creating a lot of stuff together, and we’ve sort of branched off and gone our separate ways a little bit. We still.
Tom Ray: I noticed the website that it links to from the Bandcamp page is no longer existent, so I figured something was up.
Max Oakland: I’m working on getting that website back up, actually. I still have the domain and everything. Okay. So I would like to, like, kind of revamp it. But I feel like people got their own desire to put out their own, like, thing like that. Like, my friend, Dan, who goes by Hot the Cat as a musician, has this cool band camp called Improvised Music from the US I think, because we were doing a lot of, like, experimental improvisational music. And that’s pretty much what in the Juniper is released. And it also. We made a zine, which was, called Alphabet Soup, and it featured, like, a lot of art from, anybody, like, who wanted to submit could submit pretty much anything that could be printed. And it also had a cd, so it was pretty cool. And that’s. Actually. I had the name inthejunipers.com because I was thinking about creating a band called the Junipers. And then it turned into more of, like, a. I don’t even really know what to call it exactly. It’s kind of like a record label, but it was for any kind of art. So a label of anything. Like, it could be writing, poetry, photography. But we stopped doing the zine, because it was a ton of work. And.
Tom Ray: Right. That’s the one thing. Like, it’s. It’s always fun to start with. And then once you start doing it, it’s like. It’s kind of like animation. You’ve been working on it for hours. And it’s like, that’s it. That’s all we have.
Max Oakland: That’s, why animation is more of a hobby for me, because I can only take so much of it. It’s like, every once in a while, I Get, like, this inspiration. Oh, I really want to see how it looks if I animate this thing or something like that, and then I’m good for a while. Although I have been actually doing more and more animation lately because it just seems like a good way to use, my drawing skills and like, create visual content, I guess you would call it, to put with my music. Because that’s so important.
Tom Ray: Yeah. And let me ask you one more thing before we go today. do you have any, projects or things coming up that you’d like to tell people about? things that you’re going to be releasing, things that you’re doing that are going to be coming up soon that you like to mention?
Max Oakland: Yes. So my band is playing a Show on, July 1st. So if you’re in LA, anybody who’s
Tom Ray: listening, and that’s if this. This might actually come out after July 1st.
Max Oakland: Okay. Well, if that’s the case, just go to, Max Oakland bandcamp.com or actually really go to maxoflam.com and then you’ll see where my next show is. So that would be a good one. I’d love to play music for more people and see, like, who’s out there. So that’s probably the closest thing. And I’m working on some other things, some of which I can’t really talk about. Okay.
Tom Ray: I love it when people say that. It’s so secretive.
Max Oakland: I know sometimes, like, I shouldn’t even say it, but, it just means I’ll be announcing stuff. And also, I am releasing a cover of a Neutral Milk Hotel song next week, so.
Tom Ray: Oh, nice.
Max Oakland: Listen to that.
Tom Ray: Okay. All right. And like you said, they can check that out over on max oakland dot com.
Max Oakland: Yeah. Or my YouTube. It’s gonna be there. It’s YouTube dot Com max oakland. And that’s where I will be posting it. I was gonna, like, you know, I tried to get all my music on streaming services with this one. It would not allow me to do because I guess it’s a B side. It was never considered a released song. So the. The licensing of that is complicated, I guess.
Tom Ray: Did you do the licensing through, like. Are you doing it through one of your district distribution?
Max Oakland: yeah.
Tom Ray: Oh, you are doing it. That.
Max Oakland: See, yeah.
Tom Ray: Look into that. There are some. There are some cover songs I’d like to do. And I’m always leery. I’ve never known anybody that’s actually done it through the distribution licensing. or I know they offer it, but I’m always like, is this really it or are they just like. All they’re doing is they. What do they do they charge you like 29 bucks or something? And it’s like, it’s got to be. That doesn’t seem right with all the stuff that goes into it.
Max Oakland: I’m not really sure how it works. I know, like when I was originally reading about it, when it was more of a physical thing, you were basically supposed to pay a license for every physical copy made.
Max Oakland: But I’m guessing things have changed.
Tom Ray: Yeah, now it’s more of a mechanical license that they’ve done for streaming. So it’s kind of a blanket thing, which. Whereas it’s kind of like how ASCAP used to say, oh, clubs have to pay, that there’s no people walking into a club going, oh, they played that song. No, that’s 25 cents to that artist. Like, no, no, it’s. How are they tracking it? They actually can track it on streaming. You know, that’s the one thing about it, that’s literally the one benefit of it. So anyway, sorry, small rant, but no, I want to thank you so much for talking to me today. I was really looking forward to this. I mean, gaming, animation, music, all that kind of stuff, it was right down my alley and I was glad that I got to talk with you about it.
Max Oakland: Yeah, thanks for reaching out.