The Box Story’s Noah Chenfeld & Dylan Chenfeld – HuffPost 10.14.11
Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists? I mean, considering you’re new artists and all…
Noah Chenfeld: I’ve seen a lot of interviews of bands, and it’s hard not to say something cliché here. I would say be yourself. If you’re really trying to start a fan base or trying to do this, being yourself is the first thing you need to do. You need to write music that you like, you also can’t be lazy. That’s one thing that I’m definitely learning. You need to make sacrifices. You may not go out one night, not go out to the party; you may finish this song you’ve been working on. Don’t be lazy, and if you really want to do it, treat it like anything else. A lot of people will say that music is different than something like sports, and, of course, it is. But a lot of people will say that it’s different in the way that you run it and there’s no rules and that’s what’s great about it. There’s no coach telling you what to do, there’s no discipline, and at the same time, that’s great. You need to be disciplined, and you need to know that music is this amazing thing where you could screw around one night playing music. But you need to finish the song or practice the guitar if you really want to stand out.
Dylan Chenfeld: I think you covered most of the ground there. But in life, if you want to accomplish anything, there isn’t anything that doesn’t require a great deal of focus and music isn’t any different. It requires more focus because of the amount of people that are doing it and think it’s so easy. If you’re not going to focus on it, then I don’t know what to tell you because that is really huge. You would be surprised how long it takes you to get to where you want to be.
MR: Dylan, as an A&R guy, you must get pitched constantly, but I imagine there’s also some researching on your end. How do you A&R?
DC: I have a couple things that I do. You know The Agency Group? I love that agency. Whoever their booking clients are, they leave their clients out online. I have search parameters set so that whenever there is a change on their site, I get informed of it via email. So, a lot of it is kind of snooping around and seeing what other people are listening to. There’s so much stuff to listen to; if you wanted to listen to everything, you would never leave your home. A lot of it is friends. I’m blessed to have friends that listen to a lot of different music, so I kind of look to what they’re listening to. Of course, I follow a couple of blogs, and I’m actively searching for something cool only because there’s never enough good music to listen to and if I like it, then maybe someone else will like it and we can talk about it.
MR: You’re definitely taking your own advice on not being lazy.
DC: You can’t be lazy and do it, you have to pick one.