We recently connected with Seth Brand and have shared our conversation below.

Seth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.

I really rely on remote work, especially for my studio work at “OFF Brand Productions,” as most of this work comes from clients all over the country. Artists, companies, and other creatives are able to send me files that maybe they’ve recorded themselves or at a studio in another state. I simply download everything on my end, mix and master the song or project, then send it back. This can all be done via email and/or a server service such as dropbox or google drive. I can even record parts in my studio, and add this to the production to be mixed in with the files they’ve sent me. It’s a very collaborative and effective way of working.

Aside from that, I also do live broadcast mixing right from my studio. For example, I have a church client in Texas and I live in Asheville, NC. Through a service called AnyDesk and an audio plugin called Listento, I’m able to login to their system, mix their online worship service which consists of a full band, talking mics, etc…all live and on the spot. The moves I make from my studio in NC reflect on their system within 0.5 seconds, so I’m able to properly mix an entire service across the country, without leaving my home!

The other side of my business is traveling the country playing music with my wife in a duo we call “Seth and Sara.” This past fall we toured all through Canada and up into Alaska, we were there for 9 weeks. That was actually my 50th state that we’ve traveled to all while playing music together! We heavily rely on remote communication in order to book gigs across the country. Most all of our booking is done through email or online with Facebook/Instagram. It makes it easy, and for 2023 we plan to take a break from touring as we are already booked in and around the Carolina’s through NEXT December (2023)!!!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Seth Brand, and there are two sides to what I do. I’m a singer-songwriter/musician, as well as a recording engineer, mixer and producer. I graduated college in 2008 with a Bachelor in Audio Production, and currently have a studio in Asheville, NC that I call “OFF Brand Productions (I’m in the process of building a new studio space which will be done mid 2023). I do a lot of mixing, mastering and producing for artists from all over the world, as well as post work and sound design for online campaigns, television, film and video. I’m actually working with a guy from the UK right now on a song! I also mixed some short films and did some sound design this year that are currently winning some awards for “best sound” and “best original score” in a lot of festivals around the country.

On the other side, I’m also a touring musician and play all over the country with my wife in a duo called “Seth and Sara.” We put out our first album together this past year called “Campfire Smoke,” in which I did all of the production, recording and mixing for. In Fall of 2022, we finally traveled to our 50th state together when we toured all through Canada and into Alaska for 9 weeks! When we tour, we live in our van (a 2019 Dodge Promaster 1500) that we’ve built out ourselves with a lot of help from my father-in-law. It has 400 watts of solar power that feed a 200 amp hour battery, electric outlets and lights, a stove, microwave, sink and fridge. It’s small, but cozy.

In the past, I’ve done a lot of my audio work from my van when I’m on the road. I take parts of my studio with me, and find it’s pretty easy to keep in contact with clients and pump out work all while driving around playing our shows! For 2023, we plan to take a little bit of a breather from touring, and are currently booked through December of 2023 around the Carolinas, so we get to sleep in our actual real bed every night for awhile haha!

So, the long story. It all started right after Christmas 2017, when I asked Sara to marry me on top of a mountain in the Colorado Rockies, in the middle of the snow, with nobody around and my fingers seconds away from frost bite…​(see picture). She said yes! Then, as we were racing the setting sun, we hurried back down the mountain to find we were the only ones crazy enough to have made this hike on this particular snowy/blizzard like day! Another story for another time…

We had a short 3 month engagement and tied the knot on April 6th, 2018. We immediately decided we wanted to live a life of adventure together. I was currently a full time audio engineer in St. Louis, Missouri and she was managing the kitchen at a coffee shop. We had steady, full time jobs with benefits and everything! Life was great, no complaints, but we knew we were meant for something else.

I’m a musician, and was gigging lightly around the St. Louis area. Nothing serious, mostly for fun when I wasn’t working! So, Sara came to me one summer day in 2018 with a proposal. If she was able to book me a month long tour, would I be willing to quit my job, move to Asheville, NC (where her parents lived), and start trying to play music for a living? Not understanding who I was dealing with, I said “yes, but good luck with that!” It took her 3 weeks, and she had me booked solid starting in September of 2018. I had a few months to figure out how I was going to tell my work, sell all my stuff, and live a life I’d never thought possible! Oh I should mention, she also was NOT a musician, but wanted to do something so she could be a part of this whole thing. During the remaining couple of months we had, I got to work teaching her how to play drums/percussion. Needless to say, she picked up quick and to this day still lays down the rhythm for us!

So come September 2018, we did just that. We quit our jobs, and we sold EVERYTHING. Furniture, decorations, plates, pots, clothes we didn’t want, things we didn’t need, packed the small amount that remained into her van and my car, grabbed the dog and cat, and drove separately across the country to Asheville to begin our new adventures! We hit the ground running and started playing shows together, evolving and getting better as we went. To this day, we’ve been booked solid ever since September 2018, only being down for 3 months during Covid. Other than that, it’s been great! We’ve traveled to all 50 states together playing shows (well, she still needs Hawaii) and all through the western side of Canada as well. It’s been an adventure, but we’ve both been able to live our dreams, travel the country and work remotely as we go.

In 2023, we plan to really focus on playing locally/regionally so I can build up my new studio and start attracting more clients. My current studio is designed for mixing and mastering services, in which most of my contact with clients is done online. However, I’m currently building a new sound proof recording room so that I can continue what I’m doing, but also start bringing artists and clients over to record here, live and in person!

2023 will be filled with a lot of new adventures in the studio, as well as continuing to gig around the Carolina’s! If you are an artist, band, company or anyone who is looking for a very experienced audio engineer for production, mixing, mastering, sound design, etc., please contact me!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My ultimate goal is to live a life of passion, and hopefully bring some sense of joy to peoples lives for whom I either play for, or provide audio services for. I need my clients to be thrilled and completely satisfied with whatever it is I am working on with them, be it recording and mixing their album, designing a soundscape for a film/commercial, or playing to a crowd of hard working people looking to relax and get lost in the music! Either way, I want to deliver the best result for any project possible!

It’s important to love what you do, because it’s the only way to ensure you are giving 100% all of the time. If you don’t love your job, it reflects in your life because we spend so much time doing whatever it is we do for a living. Because I’m so passionate about music and recording/mixing, I’m able to make it a lifestyle and not just a career. I think that reflects in my work, always going above and beyond what my clients or the venue is asking for, is something that is only sustainable long term if it’s a passion. I can’t imagine doing anything else at this point in my life.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

So we can call this story “Brand Van Trouble.” When we started touring, we had a 2012 Dodge Caravan…very small. We toured the first 1.5 years in this thing. We slept on a raised plywood bed frame with a futon mattress on top of it, all our clothes and gear shoved underneath. Finally, we bought a bigger van. I won’t say the brand, but it was a big old van with a raised top, a tv, and an air conditioner unit on top. We thought we’d made it!

We did our first really long tour in 2019, it was a total of 3 months long! We traveled all out west from Texas to California, up through Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and everywhere in between. The first two months of the tour went fabulous. Then, we had booked a 3 night camping adventure in Yellowstone National Park during the tour. We had about a month left of this tour, and looked forward to a nice little 3 day “vacation” camping and our first visit to this park ever. On our first real day of camping in Yellowstone, we drove up to see “Old Faithful.” As soon as we pulled in and parked, I noticed our back tire smoking. I threw snow on it, and it sizzled and smoked even more! Not good.

We spent the rainy, Spring day being tourists. Then when we left, we got about a mile down the road heading back to our campsite, when smoke started pouring from the rear end. It didn’t sound good either. I drove slowly, and we made it back to camp. I went to the front desk at the site, and asked to use the phone. I tried calling a bunch of tow companies, but only ONE is legally able to come into the park…and they know it. So, they told me they’d charge me an arm and a leg to tow a vehicle 14 miles from our site to the gate…”no thanks” I said. I like to live on the edge, so the next morning we got up and I slowly drove the 14 miles to the gate. Fortunately, there was a mechanic shop just outside of Yellowstone. As I slowly pulled into this shop, our van smoking and making all kinds of noises…my back passenger tire blew! Phew, just in time!

We went in and explained we had a show to get to in 2 days in Idaho, and they said they’d do their best to try. We grabbed our important gear, got a hotel nearby, and hoped for the best. On the day we had to leave to make our show, we were all literally racing the clock. The mechanics were amazing, doing everything to get us back on the road. They finally got it done! They had to replace the rear axle and all kinds of things back there. We thanked them, jumped in the van and off we went to make our next show!

We get about 30 minutes down the road, and low and behold the back starts smoking again. Seriously!!! We called the shop we had just left and they told us that they had another shop in Idaho, where we were heading, about another hour down the road if we thought we could make it. So again, I drove super slow to the next mechanic shop in Idaho. We pulled in, and they were waiting for us. Needles to say, we had to call and cancel our show that night…the first show we EVER had to cancel by the way.

The new shop told us that everything that was done at the first shop burned up again immediately due to a few mistakes, and that they’d have to redo it. Problem was, they didn’t have the parts to do it and had to order it all, which was going to take about a week or so. We didn’t have this kind of time, as we had shows in Southern California coming up that we did not want to cancel! So, we got a hotel that night and thought about what to do. The next day, we had a show in Boise about 4 hours away. I was determined to make it. So that morning, guitars and bags in hand, we caught an Uber to the nearest airport, because I knew I could rent a car from there. Well, I thought I could. I was unaware that when you rent a car from an airport, you MUST have a credit card. Not a debit card, not cash, not a check, not pure gold…only a CREDIT card will do. At the time, I didn’t have one.

Maybe you don’t know this, but now you do…most car rental places close about noon on Saturday…which this was a Saturday, and it was now after noon. This was our only shot at making our show. But, no matter how much I batted my eyelashes or flexed my muscles, there was nothing they would do for me, because I didn’t have that credit card. Funny enough, we shared this story on facebook while it was happening, and had friends, family, and just unknown followers offering to call and give the airport their credit card just to get us back on the road…but…they wouldn’t do any of that. We were just out of luck. So…we canceled our 2nd show ever and caught another Uber back to the hotel…again…hauling all our gear.

Anyway, back to trying to get to California for more shows. First thing Monday…we rented a van. A minivan, actually a Dodge Caravan just like the one we started in. We told the mechanic shop that we had a round of shows to get to in California, so we would rent the van, go to Southern California, play our shows then come back to pick up the van in a week. They assured us it should be done by then! So we did just that. Oh it’s not over yet :)

Southern California is not a “van-life-friendly” type of scene. Our regular van had curtains… this rental left us fully exposed. So, finding places to stealthily sleep was challenging. About a week of being in “The Golden State” playing shows and sleeping on the hard floor, we get a call from the mechanic. More problems, and more wait time for more parts! We can’t do this! We have more shows to play! So, we had to extend our van rental another week and continue to rough it while we played all our gigs. Finally, after about 2 weeks or a bit longer, we made the drive back to Idaho to pick up our van. We had just a few days to pick it up, and then drive to Arizona for more shows. So we did just that! However, what we also did was forget our cooler of food and milk in the van prior to dropping it off, so we were greeted with a rotting smell from hell as we got into the van. Oh well, at least it’s running again! We thanked the mechanics, they actually covered ALL of the costs of the 2nd round of fixes on the van b/c of the first shop’s mistakes (which was really amazing as it totaled over $2000)….and off we went to Arizona!

So the 2nd mechanic shop was in Idaho Falls, we left that morning and started towards Arizona. We got to Provo, Utah…almost 4 hours down the road, when a new clunking sound starts in the front of our van as I’m making a right turn. What is happening!!!!! At this point my patience is out the window.

We pull into a new (3rd) mechanic shop and ask them to check it out, b/c it’s getting really loud the more we drive. After another full day of waiting for the verdict while we tried to not get stress ulcers, they found the problem. I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember what it was at this point, but I do remember that they said it wasn’t good and that it would be about 3 or 4 days to get the parts they needed. Again, same story, we don’t have this kinda time. So guess what? We went and rented ANOTHER minivan…another Dodge Caravan. Now remember, every time we do this, we have to completely unpack and repack the new van, including all our food, clothes, music gear and sound system, toiletries, etc. Our whole lives basically. So here we were, in the middle of Utah, renting another van and cramming everything we had into it so we could continue our tour.

So to wrap this all up, we went to Arizona, played all our shows and swung back up to Utah to get the van after about a week, for a grand total of 3 weeks in a rented minivan, and who knows how many thousands of dollars. By this time, we only had about a week of tour left, and the van actually made it through the rest and back home to North Carolina, (minus the AC roof cover due to a parking garage mishap in the last week) where we promptly sold the thing and washed our hands of it.

The “take away” from this story is that we loved what we were doing so much that we never gave up. We never stopped. During all of this 3 month tour, we only had to cancel 2 shows, and that was it. If we weren’t as passionate about our lives as we are, we would have thrown in the towel, canceled the last month of shows, and just went home. That would have been WAY, WAY easier, trust me. But I’m so glad we didn’t do that, I’m so proud of that challenging time and how we made it through. Even when we thought for sure it was over, we kept going. My mother told me when I was younger to pursue something that you love, and you’ll find a way to make money at it and keep going. Well, she was right! When you do what you love, nothing is impossible. You’ll work harder than you ever have before, but you’ll love every single second of it. Well, most of those seconds I guess :)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sethbrand.com and www.sethandsaramusic.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/sethbrandmusic and www.instagram.com/sethandsara
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sethbrand and www.facebook.com/sethandsaramusic
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/sethbrand12

Image Credits
Studio shot by Sara Brand. All other shots by Rachel B. Pressley Photography.