I need a place to go, where we can go long if we need to. I need a vibe in a work environment that’s not my house. Well, that’s not the way I really want to work. People say, “Why do you even bother? Why don’t you just get a rig and some speakers?” Good speakers and a decent interface and boom, you’re in business. Traci: How are you using technology to make new music? Tony: I love to create something from nothing and then go into a studio with a team. Sometimes this is weird because I find out maybe people don’t really want to hear all the truth because the truth can be pretty mundane and boring, or it can shatter their dreams of whatever preconceived notion they had. We try to talk about how they’re recorded. Tony: We try to talk about how we write our songs. I love hearing the stories behind songs, which you do on there. Traci: I think when artists have Patreon, there are usually benefits that make it worth it, besides the “I’m supporting my band.” For instance, your subscribers get a new song each month, and you share all the inside info with them. I don’t have the privilege of Neil Young or Joni Mitchell to pull all my music off. They don’t really give a lot of money, as you probably are well aware, but you’ve got to be up there anyway. The hardcore fans subscribe and they’re getting that same satisfaction that you just talked about of being able to pay the artist directly and then the streams. People still want it available on those formats, of course, but we do have a Patreon account and it’s proving to be really good for us. Traci: As a music lover, I’d rather my money go directly to you than funneling through streaming services and labels. We can easily get something worked out and make something of really high quality and not break the bank. We have access to connections with friends and other musicians and producers. Alternative sources of getting money which didn’t exist 15 years ago. Now we do a crowd fund, which was basically the last couple of records. For us to try and fund records rather than save all our money and max out a credit card to go in the studio, which is what we have done in the past. Tony: With the Internet, there’s new ways of making and putting out music, and there’s new ways of making money, too. Traci: It is crazy the amount of change in technology since you began. If we were to shell out a bunch of music back then, like, say, 2010 or 2005, it probably would have been kind of substandard because we were scattered all over the place.
Fastball the way how to#
We didn’t know how to do it really, and things are a lot easier now. We would have done this before, but I don’t think it was a good environment, like 10 years ago to do what we are doing right now. Traci: I can see why you have been cranking out new stuff and sharing with fans. (laughs) But we are too busy working on our thing to get into trouble right now. Tony: Well, for me to have anything like that going on, it could be a career booster these days. Traci: Hey Tony! I’m glad to chat with you today, even though I have not found deep, dark secrets from my Austin intel. I was told, “I have never heard a bad word about him” and “He is good people!” After our chat, I feel these are correct assessments. We’re honored to leave our little mark on a place that gave us a home in Austin when we were getting started, as it did and continues to do for countless others.The band originated in Austin, and since I used to live in the Texas capital city and still have radio friends there, I asked for dirt on Scalzo before our talk.
Fastball the way full#
“From knowing ‘The Way’ as a huge hit when I was a teenager, to our Monday residency at the Hole, to now cut this song for the 45th anniversary feels very full circle.
“The Hole in the Wall gave us our start, as it did so many legendary artists over the last four decades,” Harmeier says. The rendition represents a return to the formative years for the Moonpies, who held down a weekly Monday-night residency at the Hole in the Wall for three years. It’s all tied together by Zach Moulton’s dreamy pedal steel and singer Mike Harmeier’s upper-register vocal delivery. The Moonpies stay mainly faithful to the original - there’s no two-stepping transformation of “The Way” here - but they do increase the tempo to give the loping modern-rock song a more urgent vibe. In honor of the 45th anniversary of the Hole in the Wall, the Austin bar in which they got their start, the Texas-based road warriors recorded a breezy version of the 1998 hit “The Way” by Fastball, the alt-rock trio who also launched a career out of the long-running dive bar located near the University of Texas. Alt-rock and country music may seem like strange bedfellows, but in the hands of Mike and the Moonpies they go together like chili and cornbread.
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