We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful October Rose. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with October Rose below.
October Rose, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
LEANNE: When I was a child, my parents took me to see “Cats” on Broadway, and it was my first experience in a live theater. It was magical, and I knew that someday I would be on stage too. After performing on stage in school, college, and community theater, I realized that I could make money singing, so I joined a wedding band. After that, I was bringing my own show to senior centers, libraries, and festivals as well as recording my own original country music.
DEREK: I had always played guitar and written songs as a kid, but never thought I could do anything with it. Then I was listening to country radio and heard a song by Cole Swindell and thought, “I could write a song like this.” That led me on the path to reading and learning everything about songwriting and Nashville. A few months later, I was performing my original songs out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and my professional career began with my first paying gig.
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?
We are a recently-married country duo who began our musical journey in 2016. We are from New Jersey (Leanne) and Pittsburgh, PA (Derek.) After connecting on Facebook and meeting in person at a local country show in New Jersey, we instantly hit it off and began hanging out to write songs. Soon enough, we were performing out and realized that we had amazing chemistry and harmonies. In October of 2016, after searching for the perfect band name, October Rose was born. With a unique, 80s-inspired, rock-infused sound, we have created a sound that is all our own for a male-country duo over the last six years. Recently, we have found success on social media with viral songs and videos,
reaching millions of viewers. We’ve toured around the country as well, making appearances on morning TV and radio stations. We are so proud of the following we’ve built and the relationships we’ve made with our fans. Our goal is to write songs that make people happy and inspire them, especially when it comes to relationships.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
We’ve thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall! We had literally tried everything from Facebook ads to radio tours to handing out flyers in parking lots of country concerts. During the pandemic, we found something that stuck. When we were forced to stay indoors, we turned to TikTok to promote our original music and talents. It took a while to get a viral video, but we started building momentum and continued to build on that success. But it wasn’t easy. We have stayed persistent and consistent with what’s working and look to trends that are happening on various platforms. Our advice to anyone starting out is to stay hungry, be consistent, and do what works for you personally.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
We love getting messages from our fans telling us how our music has impacted their lives. We wrote our new song “Missing Piece” for our own wedding, but it turns out that people want to use the song for their own weddings and videos on social media. It’s these stories that keep us going.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.octoberrosemusic.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/octoberrosecountry
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/octoberrosecountry
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/octoberrosectry
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/octoberrose
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@octoberrosemusic
Image Credits
Photos by: Laura DeSantis-Olsson, Jack Stalk Photography, The Nash News