We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Raina and Wendy Dear Marsha a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Raina and Wendy, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.
Oh gosh – we have such a long history that our scaling up has organically grown (with ups and downs) over 28 years. We started playing together in a band in Texas and quickly realized we had a magical connection between the two of us. Long story short, we ended up moving to Denver and starting what now is Dear Marsha. OF course 28 years ago, things were different, we didnt have social media so it was Boots on the Ground work! printing and distributing and hanging concert flyers all over town for each and every show, printing and passing out tickets, and we were very excited back then when we had grown enough to get a bulk mail permit for our Newsletters. Now we spend that same amount of time cursing at the computer and phone trying to figure out TikTok and instagram!
WE were never in the “cool kids” circle of the Denver music community so every gig and concert and connection were truly researched and sought out. It was difficult for us to get these great gigs at cool venues so we started creating our own events, growing our crowd, making connections at every event and show we could. WE now in addition to our regular performances, now host a series of concerts each year called Women Who Rock the Rockies – its been a dream for along time, and now we are in year two of that hoping to now grow that into an all day Womens Music event
We recently hit our 1400th performance together, released our new album which we are reaching 100000 streams on Spotify and nearing 100000 views on Youtube – not bad for a bunch of old ladies!
last year we had one of our busiest years ever with 81 performances including our year end “give back” concert. LAst years recipient was the Ronald McDonald House Denver and we supplied Christmas for 72 families thru the donations and gifts raised at our concert.
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.
from our Bio: Hitting 1400 performances this next year in 2023 and a new full length album releasing Feb 2023, Dear Marsha is a well-oiled rock & roll machine. While studio recordings are forever, Dear Marsha, is a magically live band. They play upbeat, energetic Rock and Southern tunes, and are known as “the band that has too much fun!”
Based in Colorado, but with performances across east to west coast and shows in Europe and Scandinavia, they have developed a brand and a major following and a huge love for their fans (self-named “Marshans”) and with as much passion-their fans love them. Getting to know this band will have you saying things like “Who’s your daddy?” … “hot, sticky, and wet!” … and “Marsha did me Dirty”
“Sort of like the Indigo girls on acid with Heart as their back up band!”
“Dear Marsha brings with it a power grrrl rock sound with a twisted shade of soul and wicked humor”.
“Marsha’s leading lovely ladies – are on a quest to marry acoustic music with the energy of electric rock.”
How’d you meet your business partner?
We met in College – Raina was an Opera major, Wendy was an instrumental music major (raina will of course insert some nerdy French Horn player jokes about now … lol) playing bass in Jazz Band. WE had seen each other in the halls in passing between classes, but it wasnt until Wendy saw Raina singing at a drag show. 1995 – Raina sang Whitney Houston’s “I WIll Always Love You” at a drag show, and even tho she was the only one not in drag, she pulled in more money singing that song than all the others put together. Wendy knew right away they were destined to play together. Wendy asked Raina to come sing with the band she was in, and Raina quickly took over as the lead singer. But it wasn’t long, that we outgrew the band and realized we needed to be in a bigger market, somewhere we could travel from easily. Denver was the place!
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
a TIP JAR is how it all started! it still funds our business today along with Performance fees. And thank goodness for the tip jar as the check we get from spotify each year of $10.85 doesn’t go far!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dearmarsha.rocks
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dearmarsharocks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dearmarsharocks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dearmarsharocks
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dearmarsharocks
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/user/dearmarsha https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dear-marsha/1457129627 https://music.amazon.com/artists/B00BMQYT1W/dear-marsha
Image Credits
Susan Roth Photography