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

Alright, Joseph thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I first knew I wanted to pursue an artistic path professionally when I started this band at the end of my senior year of college in 2017. I had always wanted to be in a band and perform for people, but I never thought I’d be crazy enough to actually pursue it professionally. But once I started to write songs in 2017, I was surprised by the quality of the songs, I was writing, and I thought they were good enough to pursue music professionally. I just chose to believe in myself and decided to take a leap of faith. To bet on myself. And I have not regretted the decision one bit.

Joseph , 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?

I think the biggest thing that sets The Relics apart from other bands is the diversity of our music. I always say we are kind of like “The Beatles meets Green Day” because those are two of my biggest musical inspirations, and it shows in our music. All four of us have very different influences, and when we come together to write a song it comes out. So, because of that we have songs that span across a wide variety of genres. Most of our songs are pretty energetic and upbeat, but we also have some songs that are more chill. But the big underlying theme that’s consistent throughout all our music is its melodic nature. All of our songs have some kind of anthemic hook that is catchy and easy to sing along to. We are also a big fan of guitar solos, and love to leave space in our songs for Sean to create some kind of iconic lead.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There’s just nothing like being on stage and seeing a crowd of people dancing or singing along to what you are doing on stage. It’s just so electrifying. And for us I think that’s what drives us to always keep growing, so that we are consistently playing in front of bigger and bigger audiences.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That everything always has to go according to plan. Because 9/10 in the music world it doesn’t. There’s just so many variables you can’t account for when it comes to being in a band. I’ve had to become used to adapting to situations on the fly. The week after we released our debut single our first drummer quit, and I had to find a new one. We’ve had band members that were star players move away, and I’ve had to replace them. COVID hit when we were originally supposed to finish up and release our song Standing Tall so we had to delay releasing that song. There’s also been a couple of shows we’ve done where we’ve experienced technical difficulties. Recently, we had a very big show at The Masquerade opening up for The Velveteers, and my amplifier’s tubes died. So, we had to do the show without my guitar parts. But we just rolled with it and were still able to have a tremendous show! The bottom line is the show must always go on, even if it’s not how you pictured it going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://therelics.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.relics/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therelics247/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-relics/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_Relics
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLEHbqvlq_MhT8lzj7ogVDQ/featured

Image Credits
Jonathan Keasler, Luke Usry, and Carey Hood.