We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Peat Rains a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Peat , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I struggle with this one a lot. I think, in my 20’s, everyone saw my pursuit to do music full time as this romantic, valiant plunge. But, they usually always had the luxury of starting a promising career with health insurance and a mapped out battle plan for life. I always regurgitated the mantra of ‘I’d rather be a poor starving artist than a mindless drone stuck in an office.’ Now, I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE performing music. I love writing music. I love being with my band on the road and tackling the great shows and the shitty shows alike together. We’re in the trenches and hopefully we can make some money along the way. But, in all actuality, that’s less than 2% of my job. The rest is the grind. It’s all bullshit. It’s important bullshit, but it’s fucking awful. Waking up with a pit in my stomach of straight DESPAIR because I haven’t posted enough to Instagram. I haven’t updated the website. Comparing yourself to others on social media has made me hesitant to even scroll. There’s always another band that’s doing better. Even without the gloss of social media and posturing, a tour poster, chalk full of proper venue dates, with good routing and supporting reputable bands doesn’t lie. Seeing something like that, when I’m striking out and getting rejected left and right from our tour proposals, guts you. It makes you want to quit everything. But, we are pot-committed at this point and can’t stop.

I envy the people with a regular job and a steady paycheck. Every month is a tap dance of making rent, skirting some bills and doing odd jobs to stay above water. I yearn for the next tour. It’s months of prep and unpaid labor behind the scenes to make those happen. And it’s a blip in the radar of other people’s lives when they zoom past it while they’re stuck in traffic. No one cares. You have to make them care. Trying to stay relevant is like climbing an avalanche. And now that I just turned 41, the romanticism in pursuit of my dream seems foolish. But, all it takes is, say, three good things to happen. We get a tour offer, we license a song, we get a shout-out from a big band on social media… that’s all it takes for me to feel like all this is actually working. It’s a drug high that I keep chasing. But I’m responsible for two other people in my band and I NEED this to work out. We’ve been at this band for 13 years, so hoping that number finally brings us some luck this year.

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

I was signed to a record label out of high school. Long story short, I think they saw me as the serious one, a leader. In all honesty, I had no clue what I was doing. Signing a record contract at a local diner over milkshakes should have tipped me off that maybe this wasn’t super professional. I have no regrets though. The label tanked a few years later and I retained all the rights to my songs. I also had about 800 CDs left of the original 1000 purchased.

I moved to NYC and tried out for a few bands. None stuck. And after a degrading tryout where I was told to ‘go back to bass school’, I swore to myself I’d start my own project. And I did. I started a band called “You Bred Raptors?”. We stole the line from Jurassic Park. First as a duo of 8 string bass and drums. No vocals or guitar. Then we added a cellist. We had ambitious thoughts of what the band should be. But I soon found out that I was really the only one in it for the long haul. I say that not out of contempt but of acceptance. I understand. NYC is incredibly brutal to its residents, especially the artists. We don’t get paid shit and trying to utilize your skill into a career is a Sisyphean effort. We had members come and go. Some were there to grow, others to get paid. Each time we lost someone, it kneecapped out progress and cut off a limb of this ever-growing tree. I was the sole surviving member. That gets to you, you know? How can you NOT think that you’re the reason they left. As the common denominator, the inner voices get louder. The ones saying you aren’t good enough and that’s why people abandon you echo louder. You begin to brace for the fallout as soon as someone new is on board. You lose songs with everyone’s changing dynamics and strengths. As a bandleader, you balance out the the desire to make everyone feel included with protecting your assets and what this band has created. We’ve been doing hard and constant touring since 2015. We’ve played more shows than most bands will do in a lifetime. But, we keep hitting a ceiling while trying to level up.

I lost some good people and good friends in this pursuit. Personally speaking, I’ve not been a great partner and boyfriend at times. I’m distant and I internalize every setback this band faces. This dream of mine has come at a big cost. I’ve been obsessed with making it work. I’ve put all my eggs in this basket and fear I have become a cautionary tale in outside whispers. The legacy band that never made it. I see younger bands sprinting past us in notoriety and social media followings. It’s disheartening to hear that people have looked up to us for a long time, while we are seemingly no further along than they are, just starting out.

Ironically, it’s at the best time for this band. The core group is exactly what I’ve always wanted. Our cellist, Tara, has been a godsend of beautiful songwriting and effort. Our drummer has breathed new life into us. Finally giving us groove after maybe a decade of technical percussion and hired guns doing the bare minimum for a paycheck. We became a full LLC and trademarked ourselves during the pandemic. Instead of giving up (which I thought A LOT about) we doubled down. And now we have lawyers and accountants and Uncle Sam to fend off.

So, I guess my point is this: This IS a leap. And a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks. And I’m not happy with it all the time. Checking the other blogs on this site means maybe I didn’t understand the assignment? But, I wanted to be honest. Social media, brand pitching and having your business be your personality has clouded everyone. This is the reality behind the pursuit. You can do everything right and still fail. You can succeed and still feel depressed. But I know when I’m on stage, performing music that I’ve written, and it’s genuinely affecting someone hearing it for the first time or the hundredth time, my tank gets filled and I’ve already made the decision to continue.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Our band started in 2010. It was an off-shoot of my solo bass performances after first moving to NYC. I was playing at this event every week called the “Drawathon”. There would be 20-30 nude models and mountains of artistic trash heaps adorning them. Think revolutionary art in a drafty loft apartment. Surrounded by them was a circle of 50-100 artists, all taking advantage of the low price for a figure drawing class. It was 4 hours each week. And I provided the music for all of it for a time. That was 4 hours of non-stop, improvisational music with just my bass and some pedals. The idea was to create an atmosphere for the models and a soundtrack for the artist to get into their flow-state. I cut my teeth on live performance there. I was in the middle of the models. And as to not seem so out of place, I started wearing masks to provide something different to sketch.

This spilled over to You Bred Raptors?. We had a whole backstory of us being rogue scientists, ousted from the genetics community for unethical cloning practices. We wore lab coats and had fake names. It would account for the anonymous aspect on stage while we performed. Silly? Yeah, probably. But, we tried to sell it. Then, as we lost members, the masks made less sense, the backstory was abandoned and we were stuck in a routine that everyone had known. Every interview we had, people focused on the masks. Deep down, it was getting hard to justify keeping them. Every time we hired a photographer for shows, the poses and end results would look identical. We didn’t sing so, our brief interactions between songs (while changing masks) became our only time to connect with our audience. Over the years, we bought new masks and had grandiose plans to get our faces molded and brand ourselves differently. But, it always went by the wayside when we lost members.

Then, the pandemic happened. Everyone had to wear masks. We thought, only briefly, about selling masks with our band name on them as other brands did. Doing that during a time where there was a worldwide shortage on PPE seemed tacky and out of touch. By this point, when we started performing again after a year and a half halt, the masks seemed so trite and cumbersome. It was hard to see and breathe out of them. Tara was pushing for us to cut down on them. Then, on tour during a dismally attended outdoor show, we opted to only wear them for 3 of the songs during the set. Feeling the air on our face for the first time performing these songs in 12 years felt euphoric. We played better and could communicate with the audience and ourselves finally. We never looked back. We brought the masks with us on the next tour ‘just in case’ but never cracked them open. Since then, they’ve been in our graveyard of band merch.

Deciding to stop using them was organic. But it was a thought that plagued me for a long time. I saw it as a sign of giving up on our brand that we had worked so hard to establish. I was worried without the masks, no one would be interested in seeing a live show. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. 95% of the people say they like it better. It’s always been about the music for them. I just wanted to stack the deck and throw all the spaghetti at the wall. Great bands usually have great stage shows. But, it’s more than just theatrics that make people remember a performance. Connecting to your crowd and marking some moment in time is what makes for longevity. It felt like a gimmick for so long, but giving it up was HARD. Now that some time has passed, I feel silly for waiting so long to pivot.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

NFTs are bullshit. I was convinced of that when they first came out. And I lost respect for some of the bands that were schlepping them when that first wave came through. I mean, I GET IT. You gotta stick with what’s current but it always felt scammy. I wish things weren’t so dire for musicians and artists that we have to hustle so hard to stay financially viable. But, here we are. I picked an easy question this time because I feel like I’m writing too much here.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.youbredraptors.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/youbredraptors
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/youbredraptorsnyc
• Twitter: www.x.com/youbredraptors
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/youbredraptorsSITEB