We were lucky to catch up with Trap Kit recently and have shared our conversation below.

Trap Kit, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

We think out of all the traits required to be a successful musician in the modern, tenacity and persistence are the two that have carried us this far. We live in a sparsely populated area and we represent the sound of the last dying breath of the wild west. For us that means playing gold rush era saloons that still stand but also adapting modern instruments and technology into our act and recordings. We are the sole voice in the world for this unique take on music and it fits us well. This has also translated well throughout five hundred performances from Los Angles to New York City, Bismarck to Austin. We aim to be be a voice of undeniable authenticity to represent our region across the globe and we do our best every single day to live and convey that experience for our fans.

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

Trap Kit consists of Andrew R. Jandt, songwriter, vocalist, guitar, drums and vocals. Eric Domkowski can be found as a songwriter, pedal steel, guitar, production, arrangements and mixing and mastering. We do everything in house and have complete control of our finished product. What sets us apart from others not only regionally, but globally is we are using concoctions of instruments together that we have never heard together in any genre or form of music. For example, electric guitar, pedal steel (a traditionally country instrument) deep top 40 radio sub bass and howling vocals have never been done by anyone that we’ve ever discovered. We learned however that it can fit perfectly.

We are likely most proud of the number of streams across platforms and the number of countries and fans we’ve been able to reach. As a snapshot, we have approximately 5 million streams in 117 countries on six continents. It’s amazing and humbling to us that our recipe has been so widely and well received. We also love it when fans reach out and contact us with their own stories of what the music means to them. Recently, Andrew went to a new local restaurant and a complete stranger that worked there came up and said I’m in love with your song “Delicate”. He was shocked and decided to handwrite and frame the lyrics to that song and went back to the restaurant when finished to give to the employee as a gift. We operate like that because Andrew once met and got to hang out with Dave Matthews during his collegiate years. Dave cared about the conversation even though he was insanely busy. So it is our goal to always go the extra mile for our fans, old and new.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

We think the best source of obtaining new fans is to play live. We’ve had venue owners tell us that there has never been a show at their venue in its history until we came to play. We take that as an honor and very seriously that our undeniable authenticity is coming through. We also have an absolutely wonderful family of fans that share our music with their friends and family. We are often used in other people’s social media videos and that of course is just another piece of the puzzle, all of which we are thankful for. It also helps us when we are added to playlists and as of our last check we had been added to 8,000 playlists on one streaming service alone. Those types of numbers are something we want to 10X or 100X in the future, however we are thankful for where we are today.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Perhaps the most rewarding thing isn’t the numbers or the notoriety of opportunities but it is when we finish a show giving our all and the crowd demands an encore. It probably took a decade to have that happen the first time, but now we plan for it. We often unplug depending on the crowd size and walk out into the crowd and deliver one final song in the most intimate setting possible. It’s humbling and I hope there is an element of both surprise and beauty for our supporters.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @trapkit
• Facebook: /trapkitmusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5waRQ_GXgnuWGAS_9-Fzmg
• Other: Threads: @trapkit

Image Credits

Lisa Houghton @allthethingsphotography