We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bass Watts-Fernandez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bass, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

As a frontperson I truly learned to perform all throughout my youth, whether school choir or ukulele classes with performances or through robotics competitions I would always be looking for a way to perform. As a manager for this band I really have just been learning as we go and taking advice from slightly larger or more experienced bands than us. I honestly feel like I couldn’t have spedup the process of learning how to be a performer as that developed simply as I grew and when it comes to managing I feel like this current speed of getting at least 1-2 gigs every month and connecting with individuals is a great pace! I think a couple of the most important skills for both aspects would have to be discipline, perseverance, and confidence because without a good mix of those three things I doubt I could have ever gone out on stage or be brave enough to reach out to venues and to have the belief in myself and the band to keep going.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Bass Watts-Fernandez, I am a singer/guitarist/performer/manager for the San Diego metal band KRŸPTIC. As of the time we are doing this interview we will have been a band for about a year and a half and since last December we have been gigging pretty consistently. The band met through a music school program before we decided to form the project, but that music school allowed us to connect not only with each other but with some other just starting as well as somewhat established local bands. As previously mentioned we make metal music or music in metal subgenres/adjacent genres such as hardcore and progressive metal but what sets us apart from a lot of the local metal bands around us is that we also like to mesh aspects of genres aside from those mentioned such as funk, we also work very hard to keep our energy up on stage to match that or exceed that of the audience. We are most proud of our last few shows where we have had the opportunity and pleasure to travel to a couple nearby towns to play shows!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe society could try to compensate artists more and try to invest in AI or mass produced art. The main issue we find is that rather than employ real artists and pay them a fair piece per commission or salary employers (typically large companies) will just use AI and that really affects artists. This also goes with Spotify only paying musicians fractions of cents per stream making getting paid for streaming extremely difficult or almost impossible.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being an artist/musician is witnessing people enjoying our music and genuinely being fans. Seeing peoples smiling faces or seeing people mosh and headbang while we are on stage is just absolutely beautiful and poetic to the soul. This also goes for when people share our music with their friends or families or on their stories!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://krypticcofficial.com
• Instagram: @krypticcofficial
• Facebook: @krypticcofficial
• Youtube: @krypticcofficial
• Other: our TikTok is also @krypticcofficial