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

Keep Your Secrets , appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

After a year of being a band, we started picking up traction in different parts of the country, so we decided to put together a tour in summer of 2022. Because we are unsigned artists and really trying to pick up traction on our own, we started a “go fund me” to try to help finance the tour, and make it possible for us to see people who have been listening to us throughout the East Coast.

We had two fairly large donations on go fund me from strangers on the Internet whom we have never even met! Then, when we didn’t reach our goal, one of our close friends (our drummer’s childhood friend) donated the rest to make it possible. During that tour, we had multiple fans travel a couple hours to come see us, and that trend continued! Since then we have had people travel a couple hours to see us whether that be a couple hours away in North Carolina, or a couple hours away in New York. That time, effort, and kindness is so appreciated, and reminds us why we do this in the first place.

We’ve also had friends continue to support through merch sales, photography, videography and general moral support. It just shows who is truly supportive of us, our vision, and sees a future for us as professionals in the music scene.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Keep Your Secrets is a pop punk band with easycore and emo influences based in Washington, DC. As a pop punk band composed of all people of color and fronted by a Black woman, Keep Your Secrets aims to make their mark within this predominantly white male genre.

The band started out in May 2020 as a YouTube cover channel by founding members and college friends Malerie Gamblin and Matt Nguyen-Ngo. The two met each other in the music scene at their alma mater William & Mary, performing with pop punk and emo acts at student-run venues from 2015 to 2017.

After receiving a shoutout from TikTok influencer and musician Joseph DuBay in April 2021, Malerie and Matt’s performances of Billie Eilish’s “Therefore I Am” and Machine Gun Kelly’s “Forget Me Too” blew up on YouTube and Spotify, taking them from relative obscurity to thousands of streams and followers overnight. It was at that point that the duo began to take their project more seriously, and started recruiting other band members to complete the lineup. Keep Your Secrets started releasing original music as a band in June 2021, and they aren’t slowing down anytime soon.

Its members are Malerie Gamblin (lead vocals), Matt Nguyen-Ngo (drums, backing vocals, guitars), Kyle Kubovcik (bass), Ken Tilar (lead guitars), and Jasiu Mich (rhythm guitars).

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In April 2023, we set out on a tour with California pop punk act, Darro. We thought the most efficient way to plan this Midwest tour was to travel together with both bands in the same van. This meant finding a van that could hold 11 people and 2 bands worth of gear and merch. Seems simple, right? But finding a van with that capacity within our budget as unsigned artists was a bit of a challenge. We were able to find a van, but little did we know we would face a few obstacles along the way. For only being on the road for 4 days, we faced like felt 2 weeks worth of challenges. The first day, which was the hottest day of the tour, we found out the AC didn’t work. On the second day, as Darro’s bass player, Tyler, gingerly adjusted the mirror, it snapped off! We got some gorilla glue and duct tape to fix it. Finally, on the third day, the windshield wipers stopped working. This was conveniently the day that we needed to drive through a thunderstorm to get to the venue. We threw some rain-ex on that thing and Ken got us there safe with 15 minutes before our set time. Right when we got there, Darro’s drummer, Dan, got out of the van and ran into a tree, which almost gouged his eye out. Darro’s other guitarist, Jordan, cut his finger on some mystery item and started GUSHING blood (to this day, we still don’t know what it was) Then, Ken cut his arm while moving the merch table. All of these injuries happened within 5 minutes of arriving…. Despite all this, we all still put on killer show!

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

The music industry, as a whole, has been notorious for skimping the artists when it comes to payouts from ticket sales. We actually experienced this in the worst way a few days ago on our current weekender. A venue sold a lot of presale tickets to our show without our knowledge, then, with less than 24 hours notice, emailed us saying they were canceling the show. Fans reached out and told us they were not aware of the cancellation until we shared it on socials and the venue did not refund their money. We are still trying to find out where that money is and issue refunds.

As a band, you have to make up for that lost revenue in creative ways, such as selling merch, which can also be an issue due to merge cuts from certain venues.

Also, to support a society that helps creatives, it is important to start early. We hear far too often of communities of color and lower income communities, whose school budget for the arts is the first to be cut. This country needs to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to education, not only for the arts, but for all subjects in all communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://keepyoursecretsband.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/keepyoursecretsband?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KeepYourSecretsBand?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kysecretsband?lang=en
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@KeepYourSecrets
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ZJfcya8zcdNSozmggXQ7E?si=oKnOXBlTSKeRxwwmOIxf5g

Image Credits
Genevieve Moore Camille Bradshaw Will Dommers