Jacob Waid

CLAIRE  

I always start with the same question: what are you curious about right now? 

JACOB WAID  

I would call myself a person with many interests, so I don’t think there’s necessarily one topic. I am always surprised by the little things I encounter in my daily life that end up sparking my curiosity. I guess a more productive way of saying it is that I can take inspiration from anywhere. 

At the moment, I’m relatively interested in staying cool, for the most part. It is very hot today. 

CLAIRE  

There’s currently a heat wave in Europe, so that’s a good thing to be curious about. What are you doing to stay cool? 

JACOB WAID  

Nothing very successfully. Staying inside is a little boring, and in the summer I often get the urge to do as much as possible outside. If I have the time, I like to go to the Danube and hop in, probably like half of Vienna these days. 

I am very lucky that I only work 16 hours a week, so everything else is up to me. It is relatively easy to hop into the Danube on a hot afternoon. It only takes a 35-minute bike ride to get there. 

CLAIRE  

You mentioned that you work 16 hours a week. What do you do with the rest of your time?

JACOB WAID  

I thought you were about to ask what I do during those 16 hours. 

These days, I’ve just moved into a new apartment, which is really cool. I was incredibly lucky to find it, and I pay very little rent in comparison. At the moment, it’s a chaotic process of trying to fit all of my stuff into this very small apartment, which is fun, of course. It is an interesting process to make sure you’re keeping everything you want to keep and getting rid of the rest. I feel like it’s fun to start a chapter not by doing more, but by doing less in the beginning. You prepare the road for anything that can come afterwards. 

CLAIRE 

But you are also a musician, right? 

JACOB WAID 

Yes. 

CLAIRE 

You make music, and you are in a band. 

JACOB WAID 

Correct. Wellbehaved. Shout-out to Wellbehaved. 

CLAIRE 

What is the first thing you remember about your journey as a musician? 

JACOB WAID 

The first thing I remember is that, when I was about 16, I started getting into hip-hop. Before that, I didn’t really like hip-hop at all, which is funny because now I am a rapper and do hip-hoppy stuff. The first thing I did as a musician, quote unquote, was write the worst verse of my life. But I can remember it to this day—the first eight bars or so—which I will not recite right now. 

CLAIRE

Why do you think it was so bad? 

JACOB WAID  

I started rapping because I was very interested in the way people could say really cool things and make them sound very appealing. I liked the idea of an incredibly dense rhyme scheme. I liked the idea of rhythm in its most basic sense, but also in its most complicated sense. 

At first, I was really into super-fast rap. Eminem would be the example. Looking back, I think what I would have done differently is take my time figuring out what I actually wanted to say. 

But then again, especially in songwriting, I think people often have the idea that you have idea A and then find language B. I often think that writing a song is more of a self-exploratory process. You start with a line that resonates with you and see how far you get. Sometimes it turns to shit, and sometimes it turns into something really cool that you can actually see yourself in. It often takes very surprising turns. 

CLAIRE  

How did you reach the point where you understood that it isn’t just about A and B, but about the process, starting with one line and then continuing from there? 

JACOB WAID  

I’m not sure whether I understand it now. I think there is a certain amount of healthy naivety, a certain amount of being naive, that gets you very far in life. Fortune favors the bold. 

I understand that it is a very scary thing to put yourself out there, especially when it comes to writing lyrics, because you’re using words, and words can become cheesy very quickly. I think you just write really cheesy things until you don’t, until something makes sense to you. 

CLAIRE  

You were about 16 when you started exploring music. How was it for you to continue if there wasn’t much outside validation? What kept you curious about music? Or perhaps there was outside validation. 

JACOB WAID  

I never got any resistance from my family. Of course, I’m sure they had their own doubts, but I was a very stubborn child. At some point, they realized that I was going to do what I wanted, whatever happened. Especially when they resisted, I would push for the idea even further. 

What really kept me with music in the first place was probably the fear of a boring life. I definitely romanticised the idea of being a musician: touring, meeting people, and being in a kind of flow state. I think what creatives generally crave most is as much time as possible in a certain flow state. For me, that was most achievable through music. I think that is inherent in what music means for people as a cultural and social universal. Everybody can enter that trance state, for lack of a better term. 

CLAIRE 

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of it, or are experiencing it yourself, you’ve been able to join tours as a support act and visit some pretty impressive studios, which I’ll ask you about later. You are basically doing what you dreamed of. Is it how you imagined and romanticized it? 

JACOB WAID 

No, not at all. I’m not sure how these things develop once you can say that you are actually successful, but at the end of the day, it is hard work, and you have to talk yourself into it. But it is incredibly rewarding. 

It’s awesome to be able to make music with good friends, or even to make friends along the way. It is always incredible to make music with people you don’t know, because everybody has their own flavours. That is an incredibly rewarding process. 

CLAIRE 

How many people are in Wellbehaved? 

JACOB WAID  

We are a five-piece band, a quintet, as they like to say. 

CLAIRE 

How did you get together? How did you meet? 

JACOB WAID 

Our instrumentalists are Toby on keys, Mina on bass, and Maximilian on drums. They played in different substitute settings for different bands. If a band was missing a drummer, for example, Maxi would help. They all met through that kind of experience. They realized that they were all interested in the same things and wanted to achieve a similar musical atmosphere, so they decided to have an instrumental session. They released an instrumental EP, which we later deleted. At some point, they wrote a song that is now called “Sunbeams,” which is on our EP, Well, Well, Well. That was where they wanted a rapper. I went to Zonkey Studios in Mauerbach after our producer, Simon Schenkmair, invited me. They felt that it worked really well and asked whether we should do something more exclusively together. 

CLAIRE 

And you were ready to go. You were waiting for that call, basically. 

JACOB WAID 

I guess so. I started writing lyrics when I was 16. At some point, when I was 19, I realized that beats are very expensive, so I started making my own. That resulted in me making music by myself. It is really cool to make music by yourself. You enter a flow state; you’re in it, you do things, and you reach a point that feels very special and intimate to you. 

But I think one of the core things about music, which often gets lost in the way that we now, particularly in the West, consume or produce music, and in the divide between music as something one produces or consumes, is that making music is a collaborative process. A show, in the end, is just a massive collaboration on a good mood. That is something this band has taught me repeatedly: collaboration is actually where it’s at. It’s awesome to be in a room with different minds. You put your ego aside, in the best-case scenario; it works more often than not, I think and serve a greater good, which in our case is music. 

CLAIRE  

You mentioned that producing beats is very expensive. 

JACOB WAID  

Buying beats is expensive. Making them can also become expensive if you don’t have the sampling rights. 

CLAIRE  

What is the financial reality for you as a musician and as a band? What do your resources look like, and how do you turn your ideas into actual creations? 

JACOB WAID  

From a financial standpoint, one has to get creative these days. Streaming services pay very little. There are always people who are able to be successful with them, and through percentages you receive a little here and there. 

I would say that most of the money in music now comes from touring, and especially from merchandise sales. With your music, you are not selling the music itself as a product, because we no longer have the luxury of people consuming music primarily through physical media. 

Most of it is merchandise. You make a brand with your music, but it shouldn’t feel like a brand. It should feel like an atmosphere. I recently saw an Instagram video in which somebody said that every band needs a mythology. You need a world that you act out of. You can then use that world to produce merchandise and so on. I think that is a very optimistic take on these things, but it works for some people, for sure. 

CLAIRE  

Are you able to live partly from your music? 

JACOB WAID  

Absolutely not.  

CLAIRE 

The money you make from selling merchandise goes back into the band. It pays for fuel for the car, for example? 

JACOB WAID 

That’s pretty much it. 

Of course, we live in Austria, and because we have a very strong social welfare state, we can receive things such as government grants. When I talk about this with people in the United States, they think it is insane. 

We were very lucky and received a grant that allowed us to press vinyl, which is very expensive if you want to produce a significant quantity. We received about €1,500 from the government, so we were able to press all of those records. We put all the money we earn from them back into the band, because things come up. We go on tour, need fuel for the car, and have to pay for hotels. Or bribe a customs officer, no, I’m joking. Things like that. 

CLAIRE  

What is the process of applying for a subsidy from the city like? Is it made easy, or do you have to dig deeply and do a lot of research? 

JACOB WAID  

It is definitely a skill. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to ask, because as soon as I feel there is bureaucratic red tape, I become very confused. 

The people you call on hotlines often make it seem as though it is a straightforward process, for their own reasons. They also have better things to do than explain a process they find relatively simple. But writing a grant application is definitely a skill. Some people do it very well, and some do not. 

CLAIRE  

Who takes care of that for Wellbehaved? 

JACOB WAID  

Toby and Sanna, our keyboardist and our singer. 

CLAIRE  

Were there other grants you applied for but did not receive? 

JACOB WAID  

We have applied for production grants. There is the SKE Fonds, and there are other programs whose names I’ve forgotten, which is probably rathertelling of how little I have to do with the process. 

CLAIRE 

Especially when you are a small band, small in the sense that you don’t have many resources—how do you work with what you have, and how do you prioritize? If you are a band of five people, how do you agree, make decisions, and move forward? What are the next steps? 

JACOB WAID  

For success in music, especially as a small or up-and-coming band, I think it is very helpful to play live as much as possible and in as many settings as possible. You will always have a different stage, sound engineer, and crowd. 

Those things are incredibly helpful because, as I was saying earlier, a concert is essentially one huge collaborative process. You develop a better feeling for what you do, who you are, and especially what your potential could be onstage. 

That is just my experience. I know many people who have been very successful through another route: meeting often, jamming, smoking a great deal of weed, playing guitar for seven hours straight, and ending up with a really cool musical outlet. That is how they would go about it. 

I also think it is very helpful for an up-and-coming band to be annoying. Venues, labels, and promoters receive many emails every day, and you have tobe annoying. I’ve heard that some people arrive at the office on Monday, look at all the emails they received on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and deleteevery single one except the top ten. They answer those because the volume is so high. There are a lot of hungry people in the scene. 

CLAIRE  

So, your strategy was to be annoying? 

JACOB WAID  

Yes, pretty much. 

CLAIRE  

Is that how you were able to go on tour and play live? 

JACOB WAID  

Some of our live performances definitely happened through being annoying, continuing to follow up and asking, “How are things going? How are things on your end?” 

It can be a relatively disheartening process, because you have this product in your pocket and think everybody should be allowed to hear it. Then you enter a situation where people simply do not respond, but you have to keep going for it. 

A lot of our opportunities, though, came because we were lucky enough to have the right connections at the right time. We were incredibly lucky to know the people we do. 

CLAIRE  

How did you meet those people? 

JACOB WAID  

I stumbled into it, to be fair. Our bassist, Mina, is very good at connecting with people. She has a great talent for striking up conversations, discovering what opportunities there are, and then pushing them, being a little annoying when necessary. 

We also have a very well-connected producer who has had his fair share of bands in the studio and experience abroad. That is how we developed contacts with bands, venues, and studios in the UK in particular. 

A lot of it is connections, but those connections come at the right time. I came to Vienna without any connections in the music industry here. Then I spent three months doing different things with this band: playing concerts, being in the studio, and figuring ourselves out. At some point, we did develop these connections. They multiply as long as you keep at it and maintain the momentum. 

CLAIRE  

I looked at the band’s Instagram. 

JACOB WAID  

Did you like it? 

CLAIRE  

I really liked it, and I saw that you were in a pretty unique studio. You went to Real World Studios. 

JACOB WAID  

We were at Real World Studios, yes. 

CLAIRE  

How did you get there? 

JACOB WAID  

We were very lucky. That is probably one of the more frequent phrases in this interview, but we were incredibly lucky in this situation. 

Our producer, Simon, studied music production in London and was the roommate of a man called Xav Sinden. Xav is a recording engineer at Real World Studios. I’m not quite sure how he got that job, but he is an incredible recording engineer and an absolute gem of a person. 

Xav contacted his friend Simon and said, “I’m now at Real World Studios, and the conditions of my job allow me to bring in a band for a limited amount of time so that I can practise and become familiar with the room.” Simon said, “I have just the right band.” Xav was really happy with our sound. Perhaps itwas also because there are five of us and we have many possibilities that are fun to explore in a studio setting. Our keyboardist plays synthesizers and keys, our bassist plays double bass and electric bass, and our drummer is exceptional. 

CLAIRE  

How did you prepare for that session? 

JACOB WAID  

Chaotically. 

CLAIRE  

Were you thinking, “We have to use the time wisely,” or did you decide simply to go for it? 

JACOB WAID  

We did not simply go for it. We were all painfully aware of the incredible opportunity that had been handed to us. At the beginning of the year 2024 or 2025; it doesn’t matter, we knew that the opportunity would come at some point relatively soon. 

CLAIRE  

Was it already confirmed, or were you wondering whether you should get your hopes up? 

JACOB WAID  

We are definitely good at getting our hopes up. It is important to remain naive; otherwise, you throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

We knew that at some point within the next few months we were going to be at Real World Studios, but we did not know when. We had a few demos for an album that were, all in all, about 30 percent ready. 

Three weeks before Easter, at the beginning of April, we received the news that nobody would be in the studio over Easter because everyone would be at home with their families. They told us, “You can be at Real World Studios for five days during Easter.” 

We cancelled all of our Easter plans with our families, went there, and recorded an entire album in five days. Our demos were only about 30 percent complete, so we created a poll in our large WhatsApp group to identify every available time slot in which all of us could work on the demos and bring them to a point where we could enter the studio and see what happened. 

We needed a reasonably confident form of the songs, so we practised during every minute that all five of us were available. Then we flew over and recorded 14 songs, with a lot of emotions. We worked day and night. We woke up in the morning and stayed in the studio until about two in the morning, completing an average of three or four songs a day. Then we went home. 

It was a fever dream. 

CLAIRE  

A good one. 

JACOB WAID  

It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. I was very tired. It was one of the coolest experiences ever, being in that studio. 

CLAIRE  

What did you take from that experience? 

JACOB WAID  

I’m not sure. Probably the pure joy of doing it, as well as the incredible contacts we made there. It’s hard to say what I took away from it. Perhaps a 14-song album is enough. 

CLAIRE  

Maybe it will only come to you further down the line, when you realize what the experience actually meant. 

JACOB WAID  

Definitely. Getting to know Xav was incredible because he is a very nice person. He has already helped me with a solo EP of mine. I think it was good contacts and good vibes. 

We can now also tell everybody that we were at Real World Studios, which is a big circle jerk, but a fun one. 

CLAIRE  

A pretty cool flex. What is it about being in a band that makes you excited about creating music? Now that you’ve mentioned that you are also doing a solo project, how do the two compare, working in a band and working solo? 

JACOB WAID  

In a band, I would say that you have many more possibilities because you have different minds with different skill sets. They can communicate with one another, push each other’s possibilities, and push each other’s boundaries. 

Our drummer, for example, is actually a metal drummer who is now playing in a jazz band. By playing in a jazz band and learning these new tricks, he is expanding his skill set, just as I am expanding my hip-hop skill set in a jazz band. We have strange time signatures, for example, where you have to be rhythmically careful or complex. 

I would say it is the wealth of possibilities that you have. With a solo project, you have the major advantage of being almost completely in control of your own output. That can be confusing because you often do not have the best ideas by yourself. You often realize that you don’t know what you want, which is a funny thing. 

Our producer once said, “I know how to produce everything I can think of, but there is a lot of stuff I can’t think of.” I think that is the hurdle when you are alone. When you are in a band, you become aware of how much more is out there. 

CLAIRE  

Do you have more doubts when you are working alone? Do you question yourself more because you do not have four other people pushing you or saying, “No, it’s a good idea, follow it”? 

JACOB WAID  

I wouldn’t say doubts. There are definitely areas in which I am uncertain about what to do, but then I ask somebody I trust. That is how I navigate it.There are musicians I know who are very good at arrangement, for example, at finding a voicing for a chord progression, or knowing how to select a particular drum sound. Those are people I can contact. 

CLAIRE  

But you would already have those people in the room if you were in a band. Does working solo prolong the process? Would you say it is slower? 

JACOB WAID  

I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to ask because I feel that my solo work is much simpler than what we do in the band. 

CLAIRE  

How is it different? 

JACOB WAID  

Our recording sessions with the band sometimes have 80 different tracks, 80 different components working within a song. My songs may have 20 because I like a bare-bones approach. I don’t like doing things I feel unsure about, and I like having that control in a solo setting. But in a band, it is also fun to let go and allow the music to take its course. 

CLAIRE  

Are you taking a new avenue in terms of genre, or staying close to what you are already doing? 

JACOB WAID  

It is definitely changing a lot, especially in the band. On the album we recorded at Real World Studios, there are songs that I have not heard before, or would not have been able to think of, which is perhaps a better way of putting it. That is incredibly exciting. 

At this point, it is not even about whether I like it. I love everything we do and the music we make, but it is more about doing it for the music, as clichéd as that may sound. 

CLAIRE  

And your solo project? 

JACOB WAID  

In the solo project, I need to like everything I do. 

CLAIRE  

And you do? 

JACOB WAID  

I do. 

CLAIRE  

Is it a similar genre to Wellbehaved? 

JACOB WAID  

In my solo work, I am definitely doing sample-based hip-hop. I really like sloppy drums. I like pockets, things that don’t hit exactly on the grid. I like swing. I like it when the drums feel a little drunk. You find rhythm in a repeated mistake. 

CLAIRE  

Is there something you unexpectedly became very good at because you make music? 

JACOB WAID  

Organizing five different people, I think. I cannot take credit for all the organization we do in the band. We have a division of labor, although I wouldn’t call it completely clear. 

I am terrible at organizing, or at least that is the image I have of myself. But with five different minds in a band, venues that have many things to say, producers who have many things to say, and generally a lot of moving parts, I was forced to improve on an organizational level. I would say that I’vebecome good at organizing a lot of moving parts. 

CLAIRE  

How do you make decisions as a band of five different people? 

JACOB WAID  

We have a division of labor, so it depends on what needs to be decided. Decisions often become more complicated once you think about them too much. They are often relatively clear until you reach points of friction. But those friction points are, this is about to sound very neoliberal, opportunities for growth, I suppose. 

For example, I was with our graphic designer, Maxi Kreuter, today to design a cover for a single that is about to be released. I am currently the delegate for graphic design choices. I have a more or less free hand, but I sit with him, we experiment, and then we develop four different drafts. I send them to the band and say, “These are the four best things we could come up with. What do you think?” 

It works the same way in reverse. When it comes to venues or shows, we are always willing to play as many as we possibly can. The only reason we wouldn’t do one is if something else gets in the way. That is usually our hurdle, because we are five people with five separate and full lives. But it works out more often than not. You simply have to plan ahead. 

CLAIRE  

Are the other four full-time musicians, or do they also have other jobs? 

JACOB WAID  

Sanna works at a start-up and also has a really cool solo project. She makes very sweet, heartfelt pop music and seems to be becoming more successful by the minute, which is very exciting for all of us. She works at a start-up but spends most of her time making music. 

All of our instrumentalists are teachers, studio musicians, or play in different bands. They are able to live from the music they make or the teaching they do. I think teaching is good for all of them. 

CLAIRE  

Were there any mistakes you made along the way in your journey to where you are now? Are there some for which you think, “Thank God I messed that up, because otherwise…”? 

JACOB WAID  

Definitely. I can safely say that I am really happy with where we are, and all of the mistakes we made were very important for us to make. 

Especially when it comes to art, I think a productive mindset is relatively incompatible with the process. You cannot be productive all the time. You need to make mistakes. That is also part of our craft. 

We need to be able to sit together during a studio session, work very intensely for four hours, end up with a product that nobody is happy with, and throw it away. That has to be something you are allowed to do. We also do this on the business side. We grow, learn, create major organizational messes, clear them up, and learn from those mistakes. I couldn’t say that I would have done anything differently. 

CLAIRE  

Was there a failure that stands out as a significant turning point for you or the band? 

JACOB WAID  

We went on a Germany and UK tour at the end of April and beginning of May. It was a double-headline tour, meaning that there was a second band touring with us. They were responsible for booking all the gigs in the UK, and we were responsible for booking the gigs in Germany and Austria. 

Preparing a tour on your own is a massive amount of work. As I said before, you have to coordinate many moving parts and different requests, so things inevitably get swept under the rug. 

We tried to organize a gig in Cologne and ended up changing the venue three times. First, our bassist Mina arranged a gig at a cool club in Cologne. We had to pay a fee, like rent for the venue for the night. She had been told it would cost €400, but there were many additional costs, and the total ended up at €1,200. We said there was no way we could justify that, so we changed the venue. 

The second venue required us to sell a minimum number of tickets in advance. They wanted us to sell at least 80 tickets, but we sold four because we had never played in Cologne before. They moved us to an even smaller venue, which was honestly a good thing. That venue was awesome to play in, although I can’t quite remember what it was called. We ended up playing for ten people. 

The low attendance was partly because we had not sold many tickets, but our promotional information also kept changing. We thought we had venue A and put it on our tour poster, sent it into the world, and created a ticket link for that venue. Then that venue did not work out. We changed to venue B, updated all the tour posters, changed the ticket link, and adjusted the promotional angle. That venue fell through too. We moved to a third venue and changed the date, while hoping everybody would realize that we were now playing at the third location. 

The funny result of the whole conundrum was that we drove into Cologne in our tour bus, came off the motorway, and saw a huge billboard that said, “Wellbehaved at Tsunami Club at 7 p.m.” But we were no longer playing at Tsunami Club, we were not playing at 7 p.m., and the photograph they used was actually of the other band. It was the most incorrect information possible. 

At some point, we decided to make the best of it. Sanna and I walked around town. People in Cologne have a reputation for being very friendly, and that was our experience too. We approached people who looked friendly and said, “We’re playing a show tonight. It costs eight euros. Bring your friends.” 

They were all very friendly, and I think two of them actually came. One exchange was especially funny. They asked how much we wanted for the tickets. We said eight euros per person. They simply handed us €20, told us to have fun, and said we could keep the rest. We decided to count that as a sold ticket. In the end, we played for ten people. It was a very cute, intimate show, and everybody was really happy with it. 

CLAIRE  

What did the entire process of organizing a tour through the UK, Germany, and Austria look like? How did you join forces with the other band? 

JACOB WAID  

We came together because we share the same producer. Simon is also the producer of Aqualine. Shout-out to Aqualine, very sweet guys and very goodpeople. We had a fun time on tour. They had the luxury of a booking agent, which makes many things easier because the booking agency is responsible for arranging the gigs. 

CLAIRE  

But their agent focused only on the UK, while you handled Germany and Austria? 

JACOB WAID  

Exactly. We played three shows in Germany and Austria, which doesn’t sound like much, but it ended up being far more than any of us expected. You decide on a period in which you want to tour and contact a list of 20 different venues that look suitable online. In the best-case scenario, you become familiar with the venues. 

You send two things: a technical rider, which is a list of all the band’s technical requirements, and an electronic press kit. The press kit is essentially alarge advertisement that explains the different things you do as a band, talking about the music without actually playing it, which is also a funny task. 

Then you see how far you get. You enter the small struggles we experienced, although in the best-case scenario you don’t. Eventually, you end up with a tour, book a van, and go for it. 

CLAIRE  

How did you decide which cities to stop in? 

JACOB WAID  

I’m not quite sure. We played in Nuremberg because we had played there as a support act before. We knew that at least some people were interested, and we received great feedback after our first show there. 

Support shows are where it’s at for a young band because you don’t have to do all the promotional work. You go onstage and do your best for 20 or 30 minutes, or 45 minutes if you’re very lucky, and then leave the stage. You don’t have to promote or organize the whole event. 

CLAIRE  

You played support for Buntspecht in Nuremberg. Was that your first support opportunity? 

JACOB WAID  

We had played support for freekind. before that, but it was during our very early stages. We played at Rockhouse in Salzburg, and there were only four of us. Sanna wasn’t even part of the band yet. That is how long ago it was. 

CLAIRE  

How did the opportunity to play with Buntspecht come together? 

JACOB WAID  

We were friends with some of the people in the band. Our bassist was good friends with Roman in particular, but also with others in the band. They listened to our work and said, “Sure, why not? Have a shot.” 

It was a great experience. We played in front of more people than I could count. For us, it was all very exciting and new: driving seven hours to a city and playing in front of a thousand people. It was an amazing experience. 

CLAIRE  

The other band you toured with had a booking agent. Do you have any other support for the band or your solo project, a manager, label, or booking agent? 

JACOB WAID  

Nothing at the moment. What is relevant for us now would be a booking agency. We are in contact with a few, but we are playing another seven shows this year, so we’re happy for now because our album is not even out yet. 

The only music we currently have available on streaming platforms or vinyl is our five-song EP, Well, Well, Well. The album is in the pipeline. It is almost ready to be mixed, and we should probably organize a tour for when it comes out, but that will take another few months. 

Until then, we are playing several festivals this summer, which we are all incredibly excited about. 

CLAIRE  

At the moment, is it okay not to work with management or be signed to a label? 

JACOB WAID  

It’s okay. We make do. It is fine for where we are now. We have the time, and we are a small band, so we can go through the hassle and bite the bulletourselves. 

CLAIRE  

My last question is something I’m always curious and excited to ask. After spending a couple of years as a musician and having all of these experiences, is there something you wish you had known when you started? 

JACOB WAID  

I think it is important to take your time. Perhaps that is it. At 19, I had the same stress that I have now at 29: I always felt that time was running away and that I had to go for it before life passed me by. 

It makes sense to keep at it. It is a beautiful process and often a painful one, but the world will not stop turning, and you have to go with it. At the same time, you have to take your time diligently. 

I often had doubts about whether I wanted to make music at all, but I always found myself returning to my computer, opening Ableton, and finger-drumming some kind of drum loop. 

There is a balance between diligence, playfulness, and patience with yourself, especially in creative endeavors. Something will come from it. In the best-case scenario, you do it for the craft itself and don’t think, “I’m going to do this to become famous.” But that is the world we live in, I suppose. 

CLAIRE  

Thank you so much, Jacob, for joining me and having this open and honest conversation. 

JACOB WAID  

Thank you for having me.