We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Betting on the End a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Betting on the End, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
For all of us, we have been a part of a music project since we were pretty young. At some point early on, we all realized this is more than just a hobby or something we would do for a year or two and hang our hats to reminisce on our youthful days of being in a band. We know that what we are doing in this project resonates with people, and that we put our hearts and souls into what we are writing, which people see. The passion behind it is really how we know this is what we should be doing with our live.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We are Betting on the End, a rock band based in Phoenix, AZ. Our genre we have attached ourselves to is “southwest emo”, which is a play on Midwest emo but with more hard rock influence and lyrically distant from songs about broken relationships.
All of us have been involved in projects over the years and have gotten involved in the local music scene through them. Our drummer, Enrique, and bassist, Brandon, played together in the metal/hardcore scene prior to BOTE. Chris and Andrew, our guitarists/vocalists, were in a indie/emo project together as well. We all actually linked up through Craigslist, which sounds like a way to get murdered, but it ended up working in our favor to bring this project together that we are all really proud of.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
The best thing that can be done is giving creative work the respect it deserves. Society tends to push people away from creative endeavors because capitalism has such a chokehold on our culture, that we are told success only comes from financial gain. Since we treat the arts as “lesser than” from the jump (cutting arts programs from schools, for example), we never highlight them as a valid and legitimate career option unless someone is extremely wealthy from it, and we then say that they only got that successful through luck or selling out, rather than through hard work and talent.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
A lot of people assume that creative work is easy and fun. It definitely is fun to be able to come together and make something from nothing, and that process is amazing to watch unfold from a guitar riff, or drum beat, or melody to a full-fledged song. However, it takes a lot of repetitive, detailed work to get to that point. And sometimes, it can get really frustrating! It’s not a linear process and there can be many bumps and setbacks along the way just like any other job. And that’s just writing the music, not even taking into account all of the marketing, planning, networking, researching, etc. that goes into the business aspect of being a musician. It’s a full on job, which can be exhausting when we are all working other jobs in addition to music.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/bettingontheend?igshid=MmIzYWVlNDQ5Yg==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084841719603&mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bettingontheend?s=21
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCAdN0zsBYaATjlIJ2Ps_LeA
- Other: https://spotify.link/rX6WQA6vxBb