Deon Rexroat

Bassist

Anberlin / Loose Talk

CHANGEOVER: Tell us a bit about who you are, what you do and how you got into the industry.

Deon Rexroat: My name is Deon Rexroat. I play bass in Anberlin and Loose Talk. I got into the industry by playing shows when I was in high school. That kind of snowballed into a career as Anberlin, with a fan base and success as the years went on, by just being a musician, playing a lot of shows and being lucky with the right band.

How did COVID-19 affect your job in the industry?

We had a lot of touring proposed and festival plans that, in the blink of an eye, went away this year. I guess you could say it just completely put plans on hold. It also caused us to shift our thinking when we did our first livestream, just as a test to see if people actually wanted to see it since people can’t go to live shows right now. We wanted to know if people would actually tune in and watch a livestream. We didn't get too ambitious. We just did an acoustic stream, or semi-acoustic, for our first one and it was received really well. From there, we decided to do something that we would never have the chance to do under different circumstances.

In a weird way, the industry being shut down allowed us to get outside the box and experiment. We decided to just start streaming live performances, starting with our first album and going through our entire catalog. It's something that would be a risky maneuver when touring and doing that live but the fact that we could bring the audience to us made it possible. In a way, it's been a blessing and a curse this year. We've been able to get creative and do something that's been really fun and special but at the same time, I think all of us would rather be out touring and playing shows in different cities with fans and having a good time every night. You could say it affected us negatively in the live music sense but, in the meantime, it allowed us to be more creative, and create something special for our fans.

Outside of the live streams, what else have you been doing during this downtime?

Not a lot over the summer. I have a four year old so over the course of the year, there was just a lot of trying to keep her busy and continue her schooling since she wasn't able to go to pre-kindergarten. Her first school year was cut short because classes were canceled. I spent a lot of my time in the first part of the year basically trying to keep a toddler busy. You can't go to parks, you can’t go to zoos, you can't go anywhere. We are really lucky that we have a house with a pool so that made it easier but also my wife was pregnant for the duration of the whole COVID pandemic. We found out about a month and a half before the pandemic really broke that we were going to have a baby. That made it strange so I also had a child during this time. That's really been my year. I’ve been focusing on keeping my family safe and sane, and myself safe and sane in the process.

With Anberlin doing these livestreams, has the band been considering putting out a new album in the future? Have you been creating new music at all or just focusing more on the livestreams?

The livestreams are a viable way for us to stay in contact with our fans. We can't tour so it's been really great. We're going to keep doing the livestreams as long as we can. There's no real end in sight for the lockdown on the music industry. We still have four more albums to go so if we can do our entire catalog, we're going to do it. It’s been fun and the fans have really enjoyed it. We’ve really enjoyed putting these together and the time we get to spend with each other to be creative. We're definitely going to keep focusing on doing livestreams as long as we can.

We have been in the process of sending a lot of music back and forth to each other and are compiling new music for a new release next year. Hopefully, we can get in the studio and get something going in the first few months of the year, but to us, it's all about having the right music. It's been so long since we put out something that we don't want to leap into anything. We want to come out swinging, so to speak. We're being very judgmental of ourselves but, at the same time, we want to make sure that we put together the right group of songs. If we don't feel right about it, we're not going to do it just to put out new music.

What do you miss most about touring?

The travel. I'm one of those people that has my favorite food spots in every city I go. I just miss traveling and experiencing new places to eat and seeing friends across the country. Touring was a great way to stay in touch with people that you make friends with over time and don't get to see very often. I definitely miss the people and the food across the country.

What do you feel is the future of the industry?

If we can get back to safely gathering inside venues again I think the music industry will be fine. In the meantime, the scary part is will it last between now and that indefinite amount of time? I think we're going to lose a lot of great venues we already have. Hopefully those venues will be able to bounce back and reopen.

I think the industry is definitely going to change. We're all going to approach things differently. It may set up more of a family mindset than in the past where it was every man for himself. We all have to exist in this same world. A promoter can’t screw over a band or a band can’t screw over a promoter just because they're trying to get their money. We all have to work to make sure we have places to enjoy music and places to perform music. We have to make sure that those places can exist and last and not suffer just because there's a hiccup in our ecosystem. I think people will come back with a greater appreciation of the music industry and that it will come back stronger than it was. It's one of those things that people love so much and they’ve had to do without it for almost an entire year now. I think there will be a brand new appreciation for it.

What is some of the best advice you've ever received?

Don't be an asshole. Just work hard and try and perfect your craft. Be a good person and work hard to the best of your ability. It’s not something somebody said to me but it’s something I picked up over the years of playing shows and observing bands that you’re playing with. The bands that were always doing the best, and were happiest while they were having success, were bands that were inherently good people that weren’t screaming. I don’t care how big a band gets, or how good a band is, if they’re jerks to people, people won’t care about that band as much anymore. I think it says a lot about who you are as a person within this whole ecosystem that is the music industry.

We took a lot of notes over the years from bands that we toured with and opened for. I think the tours that are most memorable for us, and made the biggest impact on us, were tours where we were treated really well by the headliner. Those were some of the best tours in the sense that the shows were good, and the whole feeling and vibe on the tour was good. I think it helped me develop a mantra to be good to the people that you're around and don't take your talent or your success for granted. Work hard even when you don't have to and always make sure that you're at the top of your game.

I don't think anybody ever gave me specific advice that really stuck. I want to be a band that treats other people well. I don’t want to be a band that when you talk to their crew they say “I'm just here for the paycheck. Those guys are assholes.” For us, being on the road, we were away from our family and friends at home so our crew and the band were family. They were our family for sometimes up to 10 months out of the year. If you’re going to be away from your support system at home, you’ve got to have one out on the road. You can’t be a loner or you're going to be a miserable person.

We’re doing something people wish they could do. People wish they could play music and go travel the world for free and have people want to pay to see you do what you do. Why be miserable if you’re going to do that? You want to be happy while you’re doing that. For us, we always treated our whole touring party as a family. Speaking for myself personally, everybody was pretty much an equal on our tour. We didn’t mistreat anybody on our tour. We were all family. Make sure you’re happy doing what you do.

As I was getting into punk rock, and discovering my own identity when I was growing up, I wanted to study these bands. I wondered who are they? What is this band? Fast forward to when I was watching a documentary and Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols was talking about why the Sex Pistols broke up. He essentially said, “If you don't want to be a rock star anymore just stop being one.” He was done with it and didn't want to be there anymore, so he quit. To me, it rang true. The moment it stops being fun, stop doing it. It was something that we used to say to each other all the time. It was kind of one of the reasons we thought we were breaking up, but we ended up on hiatus in 2014. It was because it really stopped being fun for us. It became a job and we weren't really friends anymore. We kind of lost that spark that made it so special and made it so fun. When it stops being fun, stop doing it.

Bassist

Anberlin / Loose Talk

Wayne Shovlin

Jason Pierce