Matthew Alexander
Atlanta Creator, Photographer, Videographer
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Finding Art In Everything | Matthew Alexander's Blog | Music, Photography, Travel & More

Finding Art In Everything is a blog full of travels, good music, new work, and finding the everyday reminders that we are human and that life is beautiful.

Chattin' About Music While Havin' a Coffee with Dom Maduri

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Dom Maduri, Mr. Toast and Jam himself, snagged a coffee with me up in Suwanee, GA at Cafe Amico and talked to me about his new band, Cool Cool Cool, getting ghosted by Steve Harrington, music business, becoming iconic, and sleeping on couches at house shows.

We’d never properly met, despite me being in the Atlanta music scene for the last two years, so we sat down and just introduced ourselves and talked a little bit about our feelings on music and what inspired us, and I slowly sipped a really good almond milk latte as we watched the bustling community of downtown Suwanee enjoy their Sunday morning.

I’ve known of Dom for a while, having seen his antics on Twitter, and seeing him perform with some old bands, so I was excited to sit down and get to know him and figure out what he’s doing with his new band, Cool Cool Cool.

 

Tweeting at Steve Harrington

Dom picked the name Cool Cool Cool as an homage to Brooklyn 99, one of the greatest cop shows on TV, and was doing his due diligence on researching if the name was taken, and found that Joe Keery, the actor who plays Steve Harrington on Netflix’s iconic retro sci-fi show Stranger Things, had a band with the exact same title.

He proceeded to hit Joe Keery up on Twitter and by his bandcamp email to try to get the a-okay to use the name.

Joe never responded.

 

Creating the Foundations for Cool Cool Cool

Dom runs Toast & Jam Studio, a recording & practicing space in Buford, GA. Last February, there was a devastating fire that destroyed a lot of the studio and equipment, forcing a long recovery process for T&J. During the long recovery process, Dom found himself writing new music to fill the time and to fulfill his creative desires.

“ When the fire happened at T&J, I just had a ton of downtime, so I was just at my house. I had like, nothing to do. So I just wrote. For months.

I’d been in punk bands my entire life, so I was like, let me try and learn some new chords. I want to push myself. I’ve always loved bands like The Strokes and Phoenix, so I was just like, let me try something different.”
— Dom

Dom had been in bands before, and I’ve only ever had the pleasure of catching one performance of an old band of his, Teddy Westside, at a house show in an Atlanta suburb. Immediately his set, he walked over to a couch and fell asleep on it. At the time, I had no idea who he was, (I had only been in Atlanta for a few months) and one of his friends came up and told me to get a picture of him on the couch. I searched back through my Lightroom archives, and found pictures from that night. Funny how life turns out.

Dom defying all rules, somehow sleeping on a couch at a massive house show

Dom defying all rules, somehow sleeping on a couch at a massive house show

Dom’s old band, Teddy Westside, performing at the same house show, 30 minutes prior

Dom’s old band, Teddy Westside, performing at the same house show, 30 minutes prior

 

Making It Fun, and Not Taking It Too Seriously

Cool Cool Cool (sometimes stylized coolx3) is meant to take itself too seriously, but Dom said if he wanted to start a new band, he wanted to do it right. And that meant putting in the effort, but playing it cool. The band is just him, but his friends (members of Blurry, Stay Here, and other Atlanta bands) have helped bring his visions to life with his new song “Wait”.

“Wait” is just the beginning - Cool Cool Cool is sitting on 4 completed tracks with 6 more that are in the works, and Dom is putting together the pieces required to get the visibility and success he’s hoping to achieve with his new project.

 

How Making a Band is Changing

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While we were on the topic of what it’s like being an all-in-one band, we discussed how common it’s becoming that a band is just one member with a number of stage musicians for live performance and studio musicians for recording assistance. Bands like Panic at the Disco, The Dear Hunter, and City and Colour are common household names for bands, but they’re primarily directed by a single person. Dom wanted to take the same approach with Cool Cool Cool to be able to execute his creative direction.

“Running a band is like running a business”, I said, “it’s tough when you have to rely on 4-5 members to consistently finance, direct, and execute different parts of the business. Not every drummer’s going to have marketing knowledge. It’s easier to have one person in charge of the direction and have other people fill in where necessary.”

We talked about how much easier it is to put musicians together when you have a good network, and it can be a lot easier to be in charge of the full creative vision if you have people who know they’re not responsible for creating that vision.

 

Being Organic and Figuring Out How to Carve Your Niche

Having this be one of the first projects Dom’s worked on that he’s wanted to do proper execution for, he said he had to figure out a lot about distribution and press to be able to announce the music past his own friends and connections. He worked with publications like The Alternative and Immerse Atlanta to get press out for the initial release, and learned a lot through his work with his label, Sibling Rivalry Records.

““As I was producing all these bands, like Stay Here, I would always give them advice. I’d feel hypocritical if I just uploaded it to bandcamp.””
— Dom, on releasing the first single

We talked about advertising, and how to best use your money in promoting new material. Nowadays, it’s easy for anyone to start a project, whether it’s a new band or a new publication, but so few of them differentiate themselves and carve a niche. We mentioned our mutual appreciation for our friends at The Alternative, who are unapologetically political and outspoken, giving themselves a great online presence and brand. We talked about a lot of bands, like The Callous Daoboys, that are admired for their non-compliant twitter presence.

We talked about how to take talent and make it into a strong online brand, which mostly boils down to being organic and being cool. If you’re good at your genre, people want to listen to it. Being yourself will connect you with like-minded people, which is the best way to get people to care about you and your product. It’s affiliate marketing at the core.

Since I do a lot of digital marketing here in Atlanta, we talked paid strategy and promotional asset creation, how to create hype, and how to drive numbers. Building a cult following on all platforms is the new way bands can reach new fans, especially with how prevalent online culture is for millennials and zoomers.

“With the band account, I can just post memes and stuff, which is what I like to do anyway. It’s not unauthentic. I think most people (in bands) are saying, “oh! we need to be funny on social media! People like that!” but you can’t really force that, like. Most people are not funny. Not saying I’m hilarious, but I got STATS.”
— Dom, on making a brand iconic

He raised a great point, because there’s no real formula that everyone can emulate to get success. If there was, every band would be able to immediately succeed in carving their way into the culture and growing their numbers. There are a couple of people from scene twitter that really nailed the absurdist humor of our generation, like @milkinhisbag (from Motives) and Eric from Heart Attack Man, but for every good account, there are ten others trying to emulate it without having a really good idea of what makes something funny.

 

People want something they can connect to. For a lot of millennials and zoomers, that’s sarcasm and dark humor, fostered by a cold world where we don’t have access to reasonable healthcare or wages. Musicians and personalities are using their shared despair to make funny tweets, and are succeeding with it. We talked about people like Halsey, who have a strong internet presence, and how everyone has to have some sort of personality or make a community around their music to be able to build a sturdy fan base. People want to feel like they belong to something.

I think the new single is really tight, and after talking with Dom for about an hour, I think he’s going to continue helping the growth of Atlanta’s iconic music scene. I think you should check out the song below, then tell me your thoughts about music marketing, twitter shitposting, and how different the music community is now. What are some of your favorite band twitter accounts?

 
Atlanta, Music, ArticlesMatthew AlexanderCafe Amicodom maduri, toast and jam, suwanee, music, atlanta, memes, marketing1 Comment