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My Band Is Going On Tour This Fall! Let's Go!!!

Auto-generated description: A concert tour poster for Kolton Moore & The Clever Few features a pickup truck on a road with a load of strawberries, alongside tour dates and locations for their fall 2025 tour.

This October, my band is embarking on the longest tour we’ve ever attempted (23 live shows in 5 weeks).

While I’m not sure we’ll survive it, it’s definitely going to be a fun adventure and I’d love to see you at one of these shows!

Ticket presales start Monday August 4th (code is STRAWBERRY)

General ticket on-sale starts Wednesday August 6

🎟️ Get tickets here: www.bandsintown.com/a/4653673…

  • Oct 9 – Birmingham, AL – Saturn
  • Oct 10 – Atlanta, GA – Vinyl at Center Stage
  • Oct 11 – Chattanooga, TN – Songbirds
  • Oct 12 – Nashville, TN – Cannery Hall - The Mil
  • Oct 14 – Knoxville, TN – Barley’s Tap Room
  • Oct 16 – Anderson, SC – Wendell’s Dippin Branch
  • Oct 17 – Charlotte, NC – Visulite Theatre
  • Oct 18 – Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall
  • Oct 19 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
  • Oct 21 – Ardmore, PA – Ardmore Music Hall
  • Oct 22 – New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
  • Oct 24 – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird Café and Music Hall
  • Oct 25 – Detroit, MI – El Club
  • Oct 26 – Columbus, OH – A&R Music Bar
  • Oct 29 – Lexington, KY – The Burl
  • Oct 31 – Indianapolis, IN – Turntable
  • Nov 1 – Kansas City, MO – Announcing Soon
  • Nov 2 – St. Louis, MO – Blueberry Hill Duck Room
  • Nov 4 – Bloomington, IL – The Castle Theatre
  • Nov 6 – Chicago, IL – Carol’s Pub
  • Nov 7 – Milwaukee, WI – Vivarium
  • Nov 8 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club
  • Nov 9 – Omaha, NE – Barnato

Exciting stuff! Let me know if you want to nerd out about any of the tour prep or behind the scenes work we do to pull something like this off.

Love y’all 👋 💙

Aaron

Life Lately - June 2025 Update

What’s up friends!

I can’t believe this year is almost halfway done. I’ve been telling myself (almost every day) that I’m going to sit down and write a blog post, but the weeks keep passing and I keep finding other things to do. But I’ve learned that if an idea keeps coming back no matter how much you procrastinate, it’s an idea worth pursuing. So here I am, sitting at my favorite coffee shop in Fort Worth (Avoca), with a 45 minute timer set to keep me focused on finishing an blog post update for you. So thanks for being here and reading this.

Where to start?

The Job Situation: A Major Change

If you’ve been following along for a few years, you know that I’ve been working two career paths since around 2010: Music and Podcasting.

On the music side, that meant playing drums with bands, but also learning how to do marketing, website & graphic design, audio recording & post-production, photography, video production, and a lot more. If it has anything to do with building a sustainable career as a musician / band, I’ve probably either done it, or studied it, or it’s on my list of things to learn.

On the podcast side, I realized pretty early on that all the skills I was learning for the music career path were useful to podcasters. I’ve always thought there were a ton of similarities between starting a band and starting a podcast, and doing either one professionally (building an audience and earning money).

Once I figured out that the internet made it possible to work with people anywhere in the world, I started offering my skills to podcasters and earned money to support myself and my career in music.

I could write endlessly about that period of time in my life (2012 through 2018), but to make a long story shorter, after working with podcasters for about 5 years, I realized that I wanted to transition to working with tech startups that were building software for podcasters instead.

In 2020, I joined a startup called Chartable that was acquired by Spotify in 2022. As a musician, this was a cool development, and the pay and benefits were nice, but eventually Spotify started rolling Chartable’s features into their software, original employees started leaving or joining different teams in the company, and I saw the writing on the wall: Chartable would not be around much longer.

This was fine with me, as I was still playing drums and working on Kolton Moore & the Clever Few, and I was feeling more and more that I wanted to spend more time working on my music career. So I started saving as much as I could, while continuing to invest in audio and video gear that I knew would come in handy once I transitioned from a comfortable tech job to working full time on the band.

Leaving Spotify

The email I’d been anticipating finally came in late January 2025: Spotify was eliminating my job and setting me free. Thankfully they provided me with a generous severance package which meant that I was in even less danger of being broke, something I’ll always be grateful for.

I’ve experienced a roller coaster of emotions since then.

Initially, it was excitement. Finally! Free to work on band stuff! Enough time to work on my own projects and do all the things I’d been putting off!

Then as the initially shock wore off, stress and anxiety set in. How was I going to replace the income I was making at Spotify? Can I even start a new full time job if I know I need to take weeks off to record an album or go on tours?

There were several weeks in the spring where I had trouble sleeping. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about the money I wasn’t making, and stressing about the future.

Eventually, the stress faded significantly as I reduced my expenses, made a budget, and figured out how much money I needed to earn every month to break even, and how long I could pay bills with my current savings.

Feels So Good, Feeling Good Again

About a month ago, I started feeling good/optimistic again. Now, I’ve always been an optimistic person, but sometimes it’s hard to feel that way when life is beating you down with multiple challenging situations, or when you have far too many goals/projects/responsibilities and not enough time to rest & reflect.

What really made the difference between feeling stressed and feeling blessed was rest, autonomy, and clarity. I mean good old fashioned “getting 8 hours of good sleep every night”, but also “I’m finally caught up with the majority of important life projects”.

Without a full time 9-5 Monday through Friday job, I had enough time and energy to catch up on all the projects I’d been putting off. Instead of feeling buried by things to do, I was able to reflect on what I wanted to do next, and I got clarity on what was important and significant to me.

I have so much to be grateful for. The band, the upcoming shows, the financial support that Spotify provided and the savings to be able to take time off to rest & recharge, the freedom & time to work on all the projects I’d had on the back-burner for so long, and the opportunity to take on new responsibilities and projects.

Working hard, and working smart. And sometimes, even resting. Feels good.

Now that I’ve got all that written down and out of the way, let’s talk about what I’ve been up to this year, and what’s coming up next.

Life Lately, and What’s Next

Highlights of this year so far include:

Recording a new album with producer Matt Ross-Spang at Southern Grooves in Memphis, Tennessee

I published a post about this previously which you can see/read here. We recorded a new full-length album in late February that will be out this summer (singles coming soon). Lots of behind-the-scenes work here, and I’m looking forward to getting it out to all the fans.

March Tour with Kolton Moore & the Clever Few

In late March, we headed up west through the mountains to play shows in Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Portland, Spokane, Seattle, and Jackson Hole. I need to write in more detail about it, but here’s some cool pictures from our photographer Brian Andrews:

Up Next

I’ve been spending a good chunk of my time getting my house ready for a new roommate to move in at the end of the month, but once July hits, it’s gonna be shows and video production until mid November! Looking forward to sharing more updates with y’all.

Thanks again for reading, will check back soon.

Aaron Dowd

Fort Worth, Texas

June 14, 2025

It’s been more than 5 years since I played a show with my Yamaha Maple Absolute Custom drums, but I think it’s time to get them back on stages.

February 2025

Recording a new album at Southern Grooves Studio in Memphis with Kolton Moore & the Clever Few and Matt Ross-Spang.

All photos by Lone Pine Media except for the last one of my new van tattoo.

First of all, a deep gratitude that I got to be a part of this band and the five days we spent in Southern Grooves with Matt. Time moves slow in the moment while you’re working on the songs but then all of a sudden most of the work was done and we were packing up to head home to Texas.

You never know exactly how things are going to unfold when you go somewhere new to work on an album, but I knew we all wanted to make a record of songs we love and are proud of, and I think we’ve done just that.

Some of my favorite memories for this album will always be:

  1. The first-listens where Kolton would grab his acoustic guitar and play a song for everyone and we’d all listen and feel the song and then talk about our ideas for it together. This happened a few times at the house we rented for the week, and also in the studio, and each time was significant and meaningful for the evolution of the songs.
  2. The moments in the studio where we’d collectively get a great take of a song, or when someone individually would get a great take adding a new layer to a song, and we’d all look at each other with huge shit-eating grins and whoop and holler, knowing that we’d made and captured something magical for the song. That collective celebration and the high fives that we’d share reminded us that we are all trying to make the best music we can, for ourselves and for everyone who loves listening to us play our music.
  3. The first time we heard the rough mixes of the songs after a few focused days in the studio and just how good they already sounded. To know all the time and effort and care that we put into the songs had all been worth it was like seeing a beautiful sunrise after a long cold night struggling to climb a steep mountain. Relief, joy, wonder, the pride of knowing we worked and made something special together.
  4. Sam and I getting Van tattoos at Bluff City Tattoos after we finished all our work for the album. Van life forever!

We were fortunate enough to find a new member of the band just in time to make this record: Matt Gumley. A bright spirit with a lifetime of experience with performing and acting, Matt has brought some much-welcomed fresh energy to the band, contributing not just bass parts and vocal harmonies, but also a raw creative spirit that elevated everyone.

Matt Ross-Spang has also been a dream to work with. He has a focused but laid-back style that meshes well with how our band works, and has a fine-tuned sense of when to provide feedback and guidance, and when to let the band members work through a part or bring their own sound to the song. I’d love to work with Matt again in the future.

A huge thank you from the bottom of my heart to Matt and all the guys in the band and everyone who listens and supports us. I hope you all know how much I appreciate you and how excited I am for what comes next.