Today we’d like to introduce you to Allee Futterer and Niko Giaimo.
The Astronots is a partnership between Niko Giaimo and Allee Futterer who grew up together in Yorba Linda, CA.
Niko was working on a rock project and Allee had started her post college life as a session bass player when Niko sent her demos and was like, “dude you wanna start a rock band?” Allee was basically like, “Hell yeah.” They did a writing camp at Lake Tahoe, met a motorcycle gang at a bar and started recording their first record, “Strange Terrain”. It was a wild time.
While recording Allee reconnected with high school and college friend, Eddie Campbell who came on board to play guitar. The three all learned the ropes together at Berklee College of Music.
“Strange Terrain” did reasonably well (for a DIY album)- it got two syncs and so they decided to take some more time to really make the music they wanted to make. Not thinking about genre restrictions or anything else. So they saved up a bunch of money and went to do a record the old fashioned way.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Self-funding a project is incredibly challenging especially as working musicians- it’s very important to make sure your people feel taken care of. We’ve learned that finding “your people” and talent to work with is essential to making dope music. Trying to get things done for free leads to disaster and half assed projects.
Allee used to work in music publishing and Niko is a busy Film & TV composer so we thought it would somehow be easy to just start putting out music and be successful. We were so excited about it and then started sending it out to people and we got a lot of, “No’s”. With that said- the songs still ended up on TV so who really knows!
From all the “No’s” we have developed a pretty optimistic perspective on the “business”. There’s a market for literally everything. It’s just about finding that audience.
The Astronots – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
There are lots of rock bands out there! We aren’t trying to be any particular genre- we are just making music that feels honest and makes us happy. Right now that medium is rock n roll. You’ll see that with our new single, “How Much Pain” that will be released on August 30th.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Our first record was definitely a straight up rock n roll album- kind of like the album we wanted to make when we were 16. Once we started writing for the second one we just wanted to “see what happens” and let whatever songs come out of us go onto the project. In the studio we didn’t force anything- if it didn’t feel natural we didn’t do it. It’s a massive experiment so who knows if it will work but the most important thing is that we really believe in what we’re doing and to continue learning about the ever changing music industry so that you can get your music to the people who want to hear it.
It’s also really amazing that we have been friends so long and continue to make music together.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theastronots.com
- Email: astronotsband@gmail.com
- Instagram: @theastronotsband
- Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/astronotsband - Twitter: @weareastronots
Image Credit:
Allix Johnson, Alex Tafreshi, Lauren Desberg
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
