This retro pop duo recently opened for Third Eye Blind and has performed at notable venues such as the Hotel Café in L.A. and The Bitter End in New York, plus other locations up and down the east coast from New York to Florida. Two weeks prior to this interview they released a video that in that time had already gotten more than 31 thousand views on their YouTube channel, which has over 150 THOUSAND subscribers. They have both written for artists on “American Idol,” “The Voice,” and “X Factor,” and one of them (Justin Bryte) was on MTV’s “Dream Bigger.”
“The fun thing about songwriting too is – and we’re (both) songwriters – it’s fun to sit down and write a song about a girl, and have a specific story in mind, and then be able to go one step further and elaborate.”
“From our perspective, going from doing covers on YouTube to releasing our first original, it was quite nerve wracking, but, we’ve gotten such great feedback and such recognition… For us it was kind of the recognition we were looking for to continue making music together!”
(Justin) “Essentially, America hasn’t come to terms yet that these are reality shows, and they’re TV shows that, there are story arcs and I think sometimes from where I stand – ‘cause I do watch them occasionally – but there are story arcs and it’s definitely more than just very, very talented people on your TV screen.”
(Slavo) “(Stetson University) had just started up a new football program. I was playing there for about a year or so. And then it was one of those things where I, it was taking me away from doing music… and I had to make a decision whether I wanted to pursue that or music and I chose music… and New York was where I felt I needed to be.”
“Not to put down any other projects from any other artists but a lot of artists put money and other means, other resources, of getting on these charts and essentially we did absolutely nothing and watched it climb to number six.”
“It’s crazy with the social media world now how your music could really hit people all over the world without you even knowing essentially.”
“Just keep making content and putting it out there for the world to listen to. You never know what’ll happen. We started off this Fly By Midnight project putting out (the song) ‘Brooklyn,’ didn’t know what to expect from it and now look at us, we have 200 thousand views on it, which is amazing. We could’ve never imagined that in just a couple years of being a duo.”
“Just put out music and believe in yourself and – it sounds clichéd but it’s so true – the Internet is so powerful and just put stuff out there for people to listen to and ya’ never know what’ll happen.”
“I think it’s (getting good numbers on YouTube) a real happy medium between… where it’s quality but it’s also consistent content. I think a lot of people do a little bit too much of either and kind of ignore the other one. I think very consistent content is great, but if it’s not quality then it won’t resonate.”
“Think of your (YouTube) channel almost as, like, a business and/or like a television show and you really have to present it a certain way because people are very quick on the Internet these days (and) they’ll look at something and say, ‘I want to watch it’ or ‘I don’t’ and (so) you have to figure out how you want to present yourself in a way to really gain someone’s attention.”
"Brooklyn"
"Karaoke"