Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Pieper
Hi Joseph, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started The Relics back in the summer of 2017. When I started it then I would have never in a thousand years thought that we would get to perform at a world famous venue like The Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood.
We started off just performing at small clubs in Atlanta, but we quickly started to get more work as we grew in popularity. We put out our first EP in 2019, and in 2021 we released two singles (Addicted and Standing Tall) that were our first ever songs to get air-time on the radio. Since then we’ve opened up for top notch touring acts like Radkey, The Velveteers, Brass Against, and The Georgia Thunderbolts.
This past October we got offered an incredible opportunity to come perform at The Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard. It was a real spur of the moment opportunity. Our drummer Greg Washington plays in another band called Flake that’s partly based out of Orange County, They had something come up and they generously offered us their prime time spot opening up for Hollywood Roses (Guns N Roses Tribute Band) on November 30th. We immediately accepted the offer and booked a flight for ourselves from Atlanta to LA.
We flew out on the day after Thanksgiving, which was such a cool experience getting to fly to a gig. One of Greg’s bandmates from Flake, Chris Schafer, very graciously invited us to stay at his place for the weekend. So we did the most band-like thing ever and crashed on someone’s couch for the weekend. Chris was a great host and showed us all around Orange County.
The day of our gig we went to Huntington Beach to eat lunch and do some site seeing on the beach. It was actually the first time in our band’s history that we did some non-band related activities together as a band. Which was a lot of fun. Great band-bonding experience for sure.
I’ll never forget the drive to the gig from Chris’s place. As cheesy as this is to admit, we listened to Tupac’s California Love to get pumped up for our first ever gig in LA. But I tell you that song has never gone harder than it did on that drive. We were ready to go rock it!
Pulling up to the Whisky and seeing the name The Relics on the marquee was a super surreal moment for me personally. When I first started playing live music back at a local Mexican restaurant in Acworth, Ga in 2016, I would have never have dreamed that I would one day see my future band’s name on a Marquee at a world famous venue on Sunset Boulevard where my heroes like Green Day, Tom Petty, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix had all performed.
The show was too much fun. We opened with our groovy bass driven song Hard Truth and immediately got the audience hooked in. We did a tip of the hat to one of our big influences from Cali and covered Green Day’s song Longview towards the end of the set. By the time we performed Standing Tall at the end of the set we had completely won the audience over. It was so cool looking into the audience, and seeing people sing along to our song. It was without doubt some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage!
We stayed in Orange County for two more days and went out to celebrate the night after our show. It was an unforgettable experience getting to perform in LA, and we will definitely be back in LA or Orange County in the very near future!
Our full set from The Whisky is available to watch on our YouTube Channel.
Also our prayers are with the victims of the California Wildfires. We were very sad to see this happen just a few weeks after we left LA.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. I started the band from scratch while I was still in college. I only had a handful of friends that were musicians, and most of them didn’t really want to be in a band. So, I had to find members on Craigslist. As the band’s leader, I’ve had to make a lot of tough decisions, and have had to make a lot of personal sacrifices for the sake of the band. For the past 5 years, I’ve been working full-time as an employee benefits broker. So, I’ve often had to burn the candle at both ends to keep up. My other bandmates also work full-time, so we’ve all had to be very committed to rehearsing consistently and have had to sacrifice a lot of time from our personal schedules to perform regularly.
Last year, our long-time bassist, Andrew Cary, had to leave the band for personal reasons. He helped write several of our most recent songs, so losing him was a very big blow. Fortunately enough, we were quickly able to find our new bassist Brandon Jay. And Brandon has done an incredible job getting all caught up to speed with our songs and the songs we cover. He was also willing to fly out to LA with us after only doing 3 other shows with us before the Whisky show. So Brandon is the man!
As most bands eventually have to do we’ve had to replace many other key members over the years. But we’ve always been able to replace people with an equally talented musician, and have always continued to raise the bar for our standard of performance. Which is something that I’m very proud of about with this band.
I really think all the adversity we’ve been through has made us better. It’s taught me how to motivate and lead the band. And we’ve all learned valuable lessons that have made us tighter as a unit. We all have developed this mentality that we’ve been brought together by fate and are a band of destiny. We truly believe that the best is yet to come!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
The Relics music is different than other artists in that we combine elements of classic rock and mix it with modern rock. The big thing that made rock music of the past so special was the melodic integrity of the music. That’s something that in many ways has been lost in recent years. Now days a lot of rock music is more about “vibe” or “feel” than it is about the actual melody. And that can be really cool, but the music I grew up listening was bands like The Beatles, The Who, Queen, Green Day, and Oasis. All of which had music that was incredibly catchy and melodic. And that’s what we try to do with our music. We try to make music that’s so catchy the first time you hear it you can sing along to, and you can actually remember the melody. We strive to do that with every single song we write.
The thing that I’m the most proud about is just the reaction we get from the audience or other musicians any time we perform. There’s just nothing like being on stage and seeing a crowd of people dancing or singing along to what you are doing on stage. It’s just so electrifying. And for us I think that’s what drives us to always keep growing, so that we are consistently playing in front of bigger and bigger audiences.
It’s taken a lot to get where we are today. It’s taken a lot of switching members out, trial and error, practice, and just plain out hustle to move this band forward. I’ve learned that it is very rare for things to go according to plan, so you have to constantly be on your toes and ready to adapt to keep things moving forward. No matter what the set back is you have to keep moving forward, If you sit around and feel sorry for yourself you’re done. You have to keep things moving.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
My favorite book is The Bible. There’s nothing that has helped me grow as a person more than The Word.
In regards to music, I really enjoy listening to Rick Beato for music advice!
Pricing:
- $25 for T-Shirts
Contact Info:
- Website: https://therelics.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.relics/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therelics247
- Twitter: https://x.com/the_Relics
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLEHbqvlq_MhT8lzj7ogVDQ
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/joseph-pieper?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7wQTTgDatXdUPahDnAQwAT
Image Credits
Mathias Fau
William Thomas
Jonathan Keasler
