We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tim “Chigger” Louie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tim “Chigger”, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My band Rahway has had this mission of just being successful in the music industry and to just make some money doing what we love to do and that is playing music. Before I joined the band, I felt there was no business plan and these three guys were just writing music together. They had a bad reputation and venues were banning them. When they asked me to join the band, I decided I wanted to help them turn this into a business with the help of our manager Larry Jones from Arc Angel Entertainment, so we can make money while the four of us can enjoy writing and playing music together. We came up with a plan which started with fixing the reputation of the band. We played many charity events for free and made our money on merchandise. Now, the band Rahway looked like the good guys. Next step was to start booking at venues and markets the band never played before. I worked with a concert promoter and started making contacts in other markets. Now, we were getting the big gigs and selling even more merch. Now, to create great music and record with a repurtable producer. Our latest song 3 songs, “Carry You”, “Rocketship” and “Drowning” have garnered over 200k streams across the board. We are finally making some headway towards our mission of success.

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

Rahway is a hard rock band out of New Jersey. I am the bass player, but my day job is a PR Professional and marketing guru. I got into the music business in the late 90s working in mornming radio in NYC as a member of the Elvis Duran Morning Show. Today, Elvis is one of the most recognized names nationally in radio. I ended my career in radio as a producer for the Whoopi Goldberg morning show. After Whoopi’s show ended, I went back to school and got a master’s degree in PR and became the PR Manager who opened Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City and later became the PR Manager for Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, all the while rocking out with my bands and utilizing my skills to help elevate those bands that I was performing with. The most recent being the band Rahway, who already had a big name on the New Jersey music scene. Today, we continue to make people happy through our music.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I remember starting with social media from the ground up. I mean I started when it was still AOL Instant Messenger to MySpace. There are people who are really good at it, I do an okay job with it. I look at social media as you’re the host of the party and your’re inviting the world to your party. When I joined Rahway, they had a decent social media presence already. Their manager Larry managed the majority of it, but he’s a student of the game and reads a lot and he used those skills to help elevate our product. We’ve added my knowledge, our singer Nick Hades knowledge and Larry’s together and I think we did a pretty good job. My drummer Steve Cardenas and I would do a Facebook Live show every week at rehearsal that fans found entertaining. Before you know it, bands were copying us. We recently brought on a guy named Sean Klein to help us with digital content and he’s really been killing it. We now have consistent content going up on our page whether it be videos, photos or memes promoting our product and brand. We couldn’t be happier with our current content management.

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

The most rewarding aspect for me, as an artist, is seeing the response that people have to what I’ve created whether it be fans singing lyrics back to us or simply dancing to our songs. Or even fans coming up to me and telling me how much they loved how we did this or did that. To me that is rewarding. I also love it when interviewers say to me, “In another interview, you said this…” That means they’re paying attention to what we’re saying and doing even though I don’t even rememeber half of the things I say in interviews.

Contact Info:

• Website: RahwayBand.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rahwayband/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rahway/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timlouie/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RahwayBand
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/RahwayBand