Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bug Frances. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Bug, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

If I could go back in time, I wish I could’ve started earlier. Although I’ve been singing since middle school and performing live since my freshman year, I didn’t start believing that I could be successful if I worked hard until my late teens. I started pursuing music as a career my senior year of high school in a blues rock group called Wik. We didn’t last very long, but it gave me the confidence and the practice to start composing whole songs for my solo project to record and perform. Due to Covid and personal losses, I definitely gave up for a while, and just focused on surviving. I really wish I would’ve kept my momentum from Wik, and pushed through those difficult years, but I’m glad I recognize where I fell short to prevent me from making the same mistakes again now.

Bug, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For those who may not know me, I am a nu metal and alternative musician from Denver! For the past four years, I have been crafting my first ever studio release as Bug Frances with my producer Dan Barnhart. As an avid horror fan, my upcoming release will be a haunting concept album and tell a story of love, loss, and possession. Recently in June, I put out three demo tracks from this album on all platforms to give a hint as to what’s to come from my future release.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Many people in my past who were not creatives struggled to understand why I would pursue a career in music. They would pose concerns about my future stability, money, happiness, or ability to make something of myself. They’d often suggest I have a plan b or just do music as a hobby and focus on my day job. Although their hearts were in the right place, it definitely discouraged me, and made me begin to question my own abilities. But I sat with myself and remembered a question an old mentor had said to me. “Is music the only thing that will make you happy, or can you see yourself happy doing something else? Because if you would be happy doing something else, do that, not music.” His question put away every doubt about my choices and ever since that conversation, no matter what people suggested I should rather be doing, I knew music was the only way I could ever truly be happy.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I am still continuing to build my social media audience, but something that helped me gain many of my followers was consistently posting online, and finding a good balance between posting too little and too much! People love to stay updated, but if you post too little or far too much, people will forget you or get bored. Finding a good balance that works for you and fits your work schedule, as well as posting whenever you have something exciting coming is a great way to keep your current audience engaged and gain new audience members!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/bugfrances
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bugfrances?igsh=MXh3aWpqdnhuMnJ3aQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paytonroybalmusic?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bugfrances2138
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/1TJQkGXZYz7L8cgb7
• Other: Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/artist/0BvLU3vbIsgdfDGMu9FsWK?si=VsAbxSmeSv-5STISscldGA

  Apple Music : https://music.apple.com/us/artist/bug-frances/1643104706

Image Credits

Elijah Nason – Photographer