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

Kyle , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

My first time performing live with a band was in high school, I just started learning how to play bass back then. After graduating high school, I moved to Los Angeles. That’s when I signed to a modeling/acting agency and discovered what it’s like to work in Hollywood. At age 23 I started my first legitimate band with my brother Corey. We were called Green Light Theory. We had grew a pretty dedicated and organic fan base. We played with some big bands and venues that I only dreamed of playing when I was in high school. In 2016, Green Light Theory and my journey as a model/actor came to an end. I was at a crossroads. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue music or entertainment as a career anymore, but I also couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s when I came up with the idea for my new project, Havoc Faction. A concept band, where I get to portray a character on stage and in music videos and everything. I put my acting and musical performance background together.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

When I started Havoc Faction, I knew I didn’t want to play bass anymore and just wanted to focus on singing and being a frontman. After releasing my first song that I wrote by myself, I recruited band members. 2 guitarists, a bassist and a drummer. We came up with stage names and personas to portray on stage. I’m known as Backdraft. My original guitarists were Nomad and Luko (later replaced by Dreamwave). My bassist was known as Maven, and my drummer, Brace. We made a splash in the local scene, but when 2020 hit I lost my entire lineup. I spent that year figuring out how to navigate still trying to be a working musician. I released a song that I wrote with my producer, Joel Ferber. Crossfire became my biggest and most popular song. I released a music video with it that really showcases the conceptual side of the band. It introduced the story of the loss of the original lineup and built the world of Havoc Faction. In 2021 I reformed the band and solidified a brand new lineup, Renegade on lead guitar, Phaze on rhythm guitar, Shroud on bass, and Zero on drums. By 2022 we were playing shows again with our first show back at the Hardrock Cafe in March.

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

For me, it’s my outlet for everything that frustrates me about society and the problems with humans and our ways of life. It’s no secret that we’ve seen a lot of corruption being put blatantly on display for us to see. Society has been swiftly changing and with a lot of woke/cancel culture curating a lot of the changes, it makes it hard to navigate and understand what our true priorities are as a species sharing this world with everything else. It’s infuriating to see humans in power creating more issues instead of solving the ones that we’ve needed to solve for years. So, this band, these songs, this is my outlet. This is my way of sending a message to the world and sharing different perspectives and points of view to shed light on these things and let others know that they are not alone in feeling the same way that i do. That we are all in this together, and we don’t need to just fall victim to the latest media scare tactic or division driving narrative. Reviving messages from fans and supporters who appreciate my songs and message is my biggest reward.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building an audience used to be a lot easier in my opinion. I’ve been doing this since the start of social media, before you had to pay to advertise your posts to your followers. It used to be easy to reach out to people on social media organically and they would respond positively and check out your band. But these days, it’s all advertisements and bots on social media. It’s very hard to stand out. I’ve been lucky to have built an organic following. Primarily from meeting people in the real world at comic cons or events or other shows. I’m having to relearn how to build that audience online. Sometimes advertising as worked and helped us gain new legitimate fans/followers. But sometimes it’s just throwing money to the wind. Luckily we have such a unique visual aspect to the band, people are usually captivated by that and check out our pages just to see what we’re about, so I’ve been just trying to make sure we always have top notch visual content to coincide with our music.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/havoc_faction?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@HavocFactionmusic