Gig Soap

Chad Bourquin (00:01.07)
All right, welcome to the Gig Soap Podcast. Today we've got Keith Sorrow from the Suburbans on. And Keith and I have known each other for a while now. Super excited to have Keith on here. Keith has taken a band that he has, the Suburbans, from just basically a club band or a bar band, we call it. Maybe even you started in the garage, like a lot of us did, and to where you're booking absolutely wonderful gigs now.

You're seeing all kinds of success. And so very, very excited to talk with Keith about what it took to get there. How you doing, Keith?

Keith Sauro (00:30.106)
you

Keith Sauro (00:37.028)
Doing really, really great. Thanks, Chad. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Chad Bourquin (00:41.038)
Right on. Well, let's just dive right into this, Keith. Let's talk a little bit about how the Suburban started and where you started. How did that evolve?

Keith Sauro (00:54.81)
Sure, so, you know, I've been playing bass since, you know, the early 90s and in original bands and so on. But like a lot of us, you know, I kind of stepped away for a minute to raise a family. And I'll never forget the phone call from my old drummer saying, hey, Keith, we need a fill-in bass player for a show I'm doing with John Michaels. I can't, I think it was called Buck Rogers was the name of his band.

and they were looking for a fill-in bass player and I said, Bill, I haven't played my bass in six, seven years. He goes, shut up, come on. I said, well, really, when's, you know, how many songs? 50, like normal, you know, when? three weeks from now. how often do I get to play with the band, you know, just to rehearse? I don't know, once. So I showed up with my notes and my bass and it was at Barley's and at the end of the show, you know, I got the bug again and Bill turned and looked at me and said,

Did you have fun? I said, I a great time. goes, good, you ready to start something? And we did. And we launched a terrible named band, but a really fun band called Midlife Crime Scene. I told you, bad name, I didn't have your coaching back then.

Chad Bourquin (02:03.854)
You

Chad Bourquin (02:07.374)
Well, I might've thought, Hey, that's interesting. What does it mean? Yeah.

Keith Sauro (02:12.121)
Right? Play on the board. Right? Right? But at that point it was a four piece. It was me, Bill Manson, was Bill Cameron on vocals, and Dan Luma on guitar. And we were doing kind of all the things that we wanted to do. But unfortunately, people didn't want to hear it. I'm sure we'll get into that in detail. But we were playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, you know, things from the songs from the 90s and

was just really hard to get a really good gig. Anyway, that's how we all started.

Chad Bourquin (02:47.042)
So, so we got this band and how did this evolve to the Cerberans or how did that happen?

Keith Sauro (02:53.466)
Yeah, so we were, I'll never forget the phone call, heading to a show and I called, I was talking to, oh my gosh, the club in Liberty, it's flying from my head, the landing, yeah. And I was talking to Chico at the landing and we sent him over some recordings and I'm driving to a show and I called Chico and said, hey, this is Keith Suburbans, I'm looking to follow up with you and maybe get some shows and he goes,

Chad Bourquin (03:08.142)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (03:23.066)
Dude, I can't book you. I said, what do mean? Why? He goes, he goes, nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear dance music. They want to hear country. They want to hear. I mean, they just don't want to hear that. And it was kind of funny because at that point we were already in the process of making a transition. had been talking with Jim Irwin. Jim was talking about joining the band.

And we were going to make that transition and start to get into more mainstream, popular things to try to change the direction of the band. But that was, we laugh, I laugh with Chico about it to this day. Say, dude, you know, you almost single-handedly changed the direction of this band. And he goes, well, look at where you are now. Right. So.

Chad Bourquin (04:04.91)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (04:16.248)
Yeah, that was a revelation for us because we actually had that talk of doing what we do is not about just, it's not when you're a cover band, right? It's not about just your personal favorites. It's what does the crowd want to hear? And that was an eye-opening experience for us. So some of the things we play, I'm not going to say I don't like it because I do, but would it be on my playlist when I'm driving around town? Probably not.

Chad Bourquin (04:43.342)
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that crosses over even beyond cover band. mean, if, if the audience doesn't want to hear your originals, there's a problem with that too. You know, um, there's this idea that it's all about us and we're, and people should like what we like. Um, you know, that's, that's a little tough to sell. You know, think, well, that's what I was thinking. mean, yeah.

Keith Sauro (04:51.854)
Right, for sure. For sure.

Keith Sauro (05:02.988)
Right. By the way, that's a good looking shirt.

Keith Sauro (05:10.978)
If it's good.

Chad Bourquin (05:12.588)
Yeah, well, and it's brand new. I mean, I haven't even watched this thing yet. I'm not sure I'm going to.

Keith Sauro (05:17.05)
That's right, there you go. Well, it's Gigsil. We're watching right now.

Chad Bourquin (05:23.81)
Yeah, that's true.

So you started, you start transitioning your set list to more, you know, stuff that people were asking for, right? I mean, how did you figure that out? What was, what'd you say? Okay, how do we decide what those songs are?

Keith Sauro (05:41.979)
So when we first started talking with Jim, obviously we were a guitar band and Jim's a keyboard player. And I'll never forget this phrase, Keith, I want to make sure there's enough sonic space for what I do. I'll leave it to Jim. And I said, well, Jim, you know, that's just it. Right now there isn't, but we know we need to transform. So let's put our heads together on how we adjust this set list. And what we settled on is kind of something really simple. And to this day,

Chad Bourquin (05:55.693)
Yeah.

Keith Sauro (06:11.674)
Any song that we pick goes through this metric number one. It has to be either a dance song or a sing-along Okay But then number two We learned that if it wasn't on the charts for at least 30 weeks Don't bother Because you're gonna learn it some people will know it some people won't and these people want to know the songs from jump So that's how we started to create You know the new setlist and sometimes we were

Chad Bourquin (06:27.927)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (06:40.538)
surprise would learn something and it didn't go over quite as good even though it did hit that metric. But what we learned was that don't keep it around. There's so many great tunes out there, just drop it. And we were just looking back recently over set lists over the last, you know, we're now going on 11 years, hard to believe. We dropped over 135 songs to get the set list where we're

Chad Bourquin (07:06.338)
Yeah, you know what?

Keith Sauro (07:06.426)
Don't get married to it. My biggest advice to any musician, don't get married to a song just because you think it should go. You can't fit a square peg in a round hole. You just can't do it.

Chad Bourquin (07:09.422)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Bourquin (07:16.684)
Yeah. I mean, I know that I've got multiple examples of dying on the Hill of the wrong song. You know, the, I mean, I absolutely love the version of hurt by Johnny cash, but man, you want to, you want to depress an audience fast. I mean, play that and just look around the room and they're like, man, I think these people all want to just slit their throat. know,

Keith Sauro (07:30.687)
huh.

Keith Sauro (07:35.424)
Just play it. Let it go.

Keith Sauro (07:45.604)
That's not the goal. We want people to be happy.

Chad Bourquin (07:46.978)
That's not the goal. Yeah. So, all right. So let's, let's talk about, so setlist was a big thing. What are some of the other things that you noticed that, that moved the needle for you guys to go from garage bar band to a premium band where people are actually paying the kind of money you want to

Keith Sauro (08:07.098)
Yep. So I called to get some work done in my house and a gentleman came over by the name of Rob Carver to do some handyman work. And I'm sitting there talking to him and somehow, of course, because that's all musicians talk about is our band, right? So of course that came up and he goes, well, you know, I'm a, I'm I'm a sound guy. really? okay. Great. I never worked with a professional sound guy. So to me it was, it was all lip service, right?

And then we got to talking a little more and found out he toured with Clint Black. you know, I was, you know, the only reason he wasn't anymore was due to the fact that he's suffering from MS and it was really difficult for him to do it. Anyway, we had a New Year's Eve show coming up at Jerry's Bait Shop and I was talking to the guys and I said, you know, I ran into somebody that says he's an audio engineer. I've never worked with a professional one. Is anyone here? No, not really.

Well, you know what, we could use an extra hand setting up and tearing down. That's how it started. Let's ask him if he wants to come and, and help us out. That was, that was the catalyst to how it all started. We just wanted extra hands, right? He single-handedly changed everything, you know, went from, can't hear the vocals and mixing from stage to all of a sudden a much, much better project. And then him pushing us to, you know,

Chad Bourquin (09:09.983)
labor

Keith Sauro (09:32.186)
get a new board, a digital board, to go from the analog board to a digital board and then switching from amps on stage to in-ears. So that really made a life-changing difference for all of us, understanding why you can hear better and you can sing better and all those things. So that was the next evolution of how our house of bourbons continued to grow.

Chad Bourquin (09:35.405)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Bourquin (09:53.006)
Yeah.

Well, man, I'm a huge proponent of that. I mean, we saw a measurable increase in rate in a short period of time after hiring a good front of house guy. Were you able to actually notice a difference even in how the audience was responding when you added him in? Yeah.

Keith Sauro (10:09.507)
I believe it.

Keith Sauro (10:18.33)
100%. And I can notice to this day that if there's something wrong with the sound and people aren't dancing, we know that there's something wrong with the sound. It's not necessarily us or the room or whatever. We don't really have that problem anymore. I mean, we've now gone through a couple of different sound guys. He retired. My son was running it for a while. Now Matt Kaczynski just joined as our sound engineer from Atlantic Express and everything just continues to elevate. But I forgot to tell you during that time, once Jim joined and

Chad Bourquin (10:35.309)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (10:46.638)
and we were starting to make that transition. That's when we decided to change the name from something that was kind of pithy and a joke a little bit. How's somebody gonna take us seriously if we don't have a serious name? And it was actually my son, Evan, we're driving, he goes, you guys are a bunch of Suburbans, Dad, you should just call yourself the Suburbans. That's interesting. Okay, talked to the band, they're like, done, let's do it, move on. Name checked, here we go.

Chad Bourquin (11:08.046)
Hmm.

Chad Bourquin (11:14.54)
Yeah, I love that, not overthinking decisions, you know?

Keith Sauro (11:17.496)
Yeah, in that scenario, we overthink plenty, but that was one that was.

Chad Bourquin (11:21.582)
What's some of the things you've overthought?

Keith Sauro (11:24.762)
Still song, one of the things we still will argue about are songs. Even though it was on the charts for 30 weeks or it was really, really close, some people will still try to die on the vine for that song and we'll argue a bit about that. But it's all brotherly, sisterly kind of arguing, you know? I would say the next transition for us though, you you hear this all the time. You don't go to hear a band.

Chad Bourquin (11:26.423)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Bourquin (11:46.062)
Yeah, healthy.

Keith Sauro (11:54.799)
someone says, I'm going to see a band. And we're going to hear it, of course, but we made that transition and said, okay, what do we do about our show? And that's when we decided to make an investment in a good lighting rig and learning how to program them. And then we hired someone to run our lights. So now, you know, there's six on stage and a lighting person and a sound person and...

Another transition was we decided to try out having a female lead with us. And we did that for a little while. And then that particular female lead decided to retire. And we ran into Shannon Bone, who is in the market, has been in Kansas City for a while. She moved away for a little while, then came back and now she's joined. So we've just seen lots of evolution and additions that have allowed us to increase our breadth of music.

Chad Bourquin (12:52.814)
So when you made these advancements, each one, if you look back on them, did you make them after the money was there to do it, or did you make them before the money and then all of sudden the money followed?

Keith Sauro (13:05.358)
The money followed. I mean, we were doing a little bit better by the time we made that decision, but everybody made a conscious yes and decision knowing that, hey, we're all gonna lose probably 25, 50 bucks each to pay this new person joining, or we're gonna lose a hundred bucks for somebody that's running our lights or that sort of thing. So we did make a conscious investment and every time we did it, the needle went, the needle raised.

Chad Bourquin (13:19.502)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Bourquin (13:32.258)
Yeah. Well, and that's, that's probably a mentality you've, you've had, I'm guessing you've had that, you know, Keith also has a advertising business as well. Have you operated the similar way with that? Or you've pushed the envelope and okay.

Keith Sauro (13:44.837)
Definitely, definitely. mean, if you can see the path, invest in it. If you try it again, go back to fitting a square peg in a round hole, you're gonna fail. I mean, it's okay to fail as long as you learn from it. And we've all done it. We've all made mistakes and you learn from them and you move on. But if I can see the path and my gut says this feels right, I go with it.

Chad Bourquin (13:50.52)
Mmm.

Chad Bourquin (14:12.876)
Okay. Awesome. And when you say gut feels right, what's your signs on that?

Keith Sauro (14:19.546)
Boy, that's really hard. It's an instinct. It's just an instinct. It's kind of like, I'll never forget when Shannon came in to audition. We didn't call it an audition. We said, let's try each other out, right? Because here's a professional musician that, you know she has the talent. She knows we have the talent, but does it fit?

And you know that instantly. You can go through two, three songs and we finished three songs and I looked at everybody and I said, do we even need to have a band meeting? I don't think we do. And I looked at Shannon and I said, what do you think? And she goes, I'm in. I said, what do you guys think? We want her in. So here we are, you know. It's just funny to watch. you know, of recent, just in the past, you know, six months, we kind of had a blow, as you know.

where ironically I had three people that needed to retire for different reasons all at once. Bill Cameron left the band years ago and we ran into Brian Wallace and he turned out to be a fantastic fit. He elevated us to the next level. And then Cullen came on when a drummer retired, Cullen Magaral, he was our drummer for five years. And Antonio came on when a guitar player, you know, you just...

People change and every time somebody changed, you'd hear me, Chad, oh gosh, I'm concerned about this change. And every time a change happened, for whatever reason, there'd be some sort of an elevation, not because they're better musicians or anything like that. It just changed the dynamic that for whatever reason, luckily worked and in some ways a better way. So it's just been fun to watch the evolution over the past 11 years.

Chad Bourquin (16:12.898)
Yeah. Well, and things I've witnessed with you is you've grown in an area of holding on loosely to things more than when we first met. You've gotten really good at saying, okay, like even with this last scenario, you got really good at saying everything, even though it was not comfortable, right? You still were able to say everything's gonna work out.

Keith Sauro (16:34.894)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (16:40.43)
Yeah, I really had my doubts this last time though, Chad. And our Monday morning calls really help. And I'm gonna say this in front of you and the world and everything. Chad, you're much more than just an agent, right? I mean, you are a business coach. And those Monday morning meetings, sometimes I drag my ass into it. Like I'm just not interested in dealing with this Monday morning call. I got business on the brain, plus the band, plus everything. And by the time I'm done with that call, it started my day.

Chad Bourquin (17:03.598)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (17:09.242)
because you got us thinking about something. And that's important. So I thank you for that. And anyone that's not on your gig soap calls and as a musician needs to consider it. there's your $20, $20. Checks in the mail, right Chad? No, but I mean it. Like it's the best investment I ever made for sure. And now we've become friends over it and all that. But it is, you what we do, if you have a day job and you're not doing this for a living.

Chad Bourquin (17:23.2)
I'll see you minute. Yeah, I'll be in there.

Chad Bourquin (17:29.56)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (17:38.779)
Okay, which we have day jobs. I know a lot of people don't that do this, but we all have day jobs and we do this for a living. And now we're doing 60 shows a year as a part-time thing, right? Which is way more than part-time, but it's kind of a sickness. Like you have to have this, you really miss it. And someone who isn't a musician can't understand it. It's like, if it's not there, part of you is dead.

Chad Bourquin (17:52.44)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (18:07.588)
Right? And I missed it for all those years that I didn't realize it until I sat in with Bill. So here we are finding out that Brian needed to retire for certain reasons. Our guitar player, Antonio, needed to retire. He was having really bad tinnitus and it was really scary to him. And then our drummer, you know, he has young kids and he needed to retire. And I remember turning to Jim and go, well, it's been a good ride. It's now me, you and Shannon.

So 50 % of the band is gone. What do you want to do? And he said, let's just see what's out there and see what happens. Okay. I kid you not, within a week there was a post. Cham Newhouse had posted on his page that he was ready for his next chapter in life. Cham was a vocalist in Atlantic Express. And Jim had met him at Purple Jam.

So he reached out to him and Champ said, this is great. I wanna come see you and see what you're all about. I'm looking at your website and looking at your videos, but I wanna see you guys live. we were headlining Plaza Art Fair, which still was, in my opinion, one of the bright shining shows of the Suburban's 11 year career. Because when you step out on that stage and there's that many people moving, it's just a rush that you can't explain. mean, musicians are listening to this, so they understand.

Someone listening to this is not a musician. You just don't understand that. And we came on court and we had a great show and Cham came up right after and walked up and I met him and his wife, April, and he goes, I'm so interested. Let's get together and see how this works. We started with him. That was a no brainer, you three songs and you ready? You want to do this? You know? And then he referred Aaron Heatherington, who's a drummer of Atlantic Express. And then Matt Kazitzu, who he ended up coming in, auditioning and joining.

And then Grant Greenlee had decided he was going to just do acoustic stuff. He was with Vinyl Revival, but Jim knew him for years and called Grant and said, hey, Grant, I know you were gonna just do some other stuff, but we need a guitar player. Come check it out. We've always talked about being in a band together, never happened. And here we are. We're now on our about 18th show together and it is really starting to mesh and it's a lot of fun.

Keith Sauro (20:33.626)
So we dodged the bullet again, Chad. You said we would, and we did.

Chad Bourquin (20:37.358)
Well, I think I think what happened there I mean is you just you were open to the possibilities was what Jim said You know and anytime we anytime we're open Then and and we're not pigeonholing where we think it needs to go Then that allows for even better ideas and things to happen that you know, we didn't even see coming right? I mean

Keith Sauro (20:45.4)
Right.

Keith Sauro (21:03.8)
It goes back to what I've been saying all along. You can't fit a square peg in a round hole. It's gonna happen and it's gonna feel right and your guts gonna feel right and everybody's feeling right or it's not. And now we're doing merch and as you can see as you're wearing, we didn't have any more. mean, everything has just kind of taken another jump. We've invested more in our PA system. We've invested more in lights. It's just we just keep investing into making the show bigger and

Chad Bourquin (21:11.651)
Yep.

Chad Bourquin (21:33.698)
Yeah. And so let's, let's shift now to talk about, cause I mean, this could, this could, you know, I'm sitting here listening to even my speech. could, it could seem like this is about just getting a bigger check, which that's then that's a nice side benefit, you know, but let's talk about the kind of gigs that come with these better checks and why it's more fun to play these gigs and the appreciation that you experience. And just talk about that a little bit. Cause there there's a huge benefit.

way beyond the money for these better gigs.

Keith Sauro (22:05.174)
There really is. it's, you know, I think people play music because it makes them happy, right? I mean, it does. Your physiology changes when you're singing or playing. That's And when you perform to a very involved and interested crowd, you realize that you're making a whole bunch of people happy. How could that be bad? Right?

Chad Bourquin (22:33.048)
Yeah, it's nice.

Keith Sauro (22:34.426)
It's the greatest feeling in the world, in my opinion. When you step out there and you hit that first note and all of a sudden people start jumping on that dance floor and moving around. you know, I tell people this, especially when you're doing a corporate event or a wedding, you will not remember the food from that event. You probably won't even remember the environment.

But you will remember live music. We're making memories.

That's a bigger payout than any check as far as I'm concerned.

Chad Bourquin (23:11.958)
Yeah, for sure. When you say making memories, I mean, you're talking about making real connections with people, right? So what are some of the things as a band that you worked on to make those connections beyond just being great?

Keith Sauro (23:21.103)
Yep.

Keith Sauro (23:31.067)
Well, first and foremost, making sure that set list people know from jump, right? They want to know every song that you're playing from minute one in the world that we live in, right? We're not an original act, you know, we're not at the record bar, you know, we're at Barley's at a bar, we're at a corporate event. They don't hire you for original music, they hire you for cover music, right? So that's one really big thing.

Chad Bourquin (23:55.822)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (23:59.931)
The other is the way we interact with the crowd. know, people joke with me about the somebody scream thing, right? I found out that people in the crowd actually have a bet, right, on how many times I'm gonna say it each show and they have drinking games around it and all that. I didn't know that till just recently. think that's pretty funny. But also, and it started with Brian doing this and now Cham does this as well and so does Shannon.

They get in the crowd. They're with their microphone singing. Sometimes people don't like that. know, it seems, you know, someone might say, that's kind of cheesy that you got in the crowd. You should always stay on the stage. I don't know. People really like it. They like to feel like they're involved. If they come up and they're singing and my gosh, a microphone happens to get in their mouth and they in their face and they get to, they get to sing a couple of those notes and they hear themself over the speaker. How many people is that person going to tell what happened? Right?

a lot. So it's the engagement with the crowd, not just from a setlist perspective, but singing to them, not at them.

Chad Bourquin (25:10.86)
Yeah. What other things do you do, maybe like talk a little bit how you guys, and I've watched you guys do this, on your breaks. How important is how you handle your breaks as far as connecting to the crowd?

Keith Sauro (25:25.632)
yeah. So first of all, when you go on break, you better make sure you have some really good house music to keep the vibe going. Right? So we, we almost always, you'll notice this now that I say it, Chad, we almost always at first break, because usually only do three hours sets. So we'll take one break. We have something like the wobble on, you know, where people want to continue that, that dance vibe, right? And you'll see people just with house music dancing to it, right?

It's also one of our test markets for songs that we're gonna learn. We'll put that in the mix just to see. But you know what? You taught me this, Chad. When you're performing, most of the people that are out there wish they could do what you do, right? So they're there because they're fans of the band, but they really enjoy.

Chad Bourquin (25:58.286)
Right,

Mm-hmm.

Chad Bourquin (26:17.39)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (26:23.32)
live music. They could be doing anything else they want to on a Friday or Saturday night, but they're there. Go talk to them. Yes, you need your break. Yes, you need a minute, but go around, say hello, thank people for coming. It's the number one, it feeds you just like it does when you're out in the crowd. Like when you hear those compliments and they're into it and they're having a good time. But by having that conversation with that person, they're going to tell five other people.

conversation, right? And you just can't, your fan base just continues to grow just from something that simple being nice. I think that's the best time you can spend.

Chad Bourquin (27:03.02)
Yeah, for sure. Well, and like I said, I've watched you guys, you guys all seem to do a really good job of it, you know, in that connection, they don't forget. But just like you said, they don't forget it. And so now you're talking about multiplication of people instead of addition.

Keith Sauro (27:13.508)
Right?

Chad Bourquin (27:21.674)
of fans, you're multiplying your fans through other fans. I mean, it's the oldest network marketing plan ever. You go find three to find three to find three, right? We're just doing that with our fans and letting them help, help, you know, bring the crowd in. when you like, when you're looking at your crowds from show to show, are you seeing a lot of consistent faces?

Keith Sauro (27:48.219)
Yeah, we see a lot of consistent faces. But we also are noticing when I go out and talk to someone and be like, is this your first time seeing us? Oh no, we've seen you like 12 times. And I always make a joke. like, you should get your hearing checked. Are you sure? You know, they get a kick out of that, right? It's just like, really? You came back and you're after hearing us? know, they get a kick out of the fact that we're being modest about what we do. But.

We're finding that we have a deeper well of fans that we might not notice that are starting to come back more and more and more. And that's really exciting.

Chad Bourquin (28:24.362)
So how are these people finding out from show to show to show that we're gonna be? Okay.

Keith Sauro (28:27.95)
friends, referrals, they're watching social media. They might see us on a marquee or see us advertised at knuckleheads or some show and they frequent that bar and all of a sudden they came to see us. It's just, you know how it spreads, many, many ways.

Chad Bourquin (28:45.774)
Yeah. Well, and you're the guy that I know you, you're not going to sit still very long. So what is next for the Suburbans? What are you, what, what are you working on now that you've kind of got this new group wrangled in and everything's everything. mean, we, just saw you obviously last Thursday and you guys killed it. It looked like it was, it was super tight. Um, looked like you'd been working together way longer than, than 18 gigs. So

Keith Sauro (29:04.271)
Yeah.

Keith Sauro (29:13.498)
That means a lot, thank you. More new songs. So continuing to flip some of the set list and not because the songs aren't great, but we have a new male lead and he inherited some of the things that were really, really appropriate for Brian. And both of them can sing anything. But at the same time, there are always things that people feel even more comfortable about.

Chad Bourquin (29:14.936)
So that's good, thanks, so what's next?

Keith Sauro (29:42.893)
fits their wheelhouse even more. So more of that, more medleys, we're finding that those are fun. And more duets, like the way Cham and Shannon are playing off each other has been really, really great. so having more things that they can do as a unit, I think brings out the band more.

Chad Bourquin (29:49.879)
Mm-hmm.

Keith Sauro (30:06.596)
We also made a big shift to where it used to be, know, Brian would sing three or four songs, Shannon would sing two or three. We shifted it to where it's, you know, it's Cham, Shannon, Cham, Shannon, Cham, Shannon. So they're constantly alternating and we think that adds a layer of energy to the show. That's a little bit different. So just constantly evolving.

Chad Bourquin (30:25.772)
Yeah. I could see that. You know, I a coach tell me long time ago, and I think we've talked about this on our mastermind, but if they, if the audience can ever draw a beat on you, in other words, they can tell if they think they know what's coming next, you can, that's the beginning of you losing their attention.

And I feel like you guys have done a really good job of preventing them from drawing a beat on you because you don't really know what's coming next. Address that a little bit, how you guys have done that.

Keith Sauro (30:58.606)
Yeah, so, no offense to other bands that do this, but there's bands that they keep their same show in the same order always. We try not to do that. There might be some things that are together, but, you know, where one song flows into another naturally, but we try to mix it up where we're not always starting and ending with the same songs. And we, you know, obviously we know more songs than we can play in one show. You know, one show's about 40 songs, right?

and we know of at least 60. So rotating those out and constantly rotating those out to get new things and to keep people guessing is an important part of the show as well.

Chad Bourquin (31:40.192)
Awesome. Keith, man, I really, really appreciate you being on here. You know, there was, there was so many nuggets that you shared, whether you realize they're not, they were there and, it's going to, it's going to help people. mean, if you were, if you were getting the chance to just talk to some, somebody just kind of getting started on this path, maybe it's a young musician, or maybe it's somebody that went through a similar situation with you, or you kind of took a break, built it, built a career and then got back into it. What, what would your advice be to that person?

Keith Sauro (31:50.219)
I hope so.

Keith Sauro (32:05.081)
Yep.

Keith Sauro (32:10.382)
I'm gonna go back to a conversation that I had almost 12 years ago with Brian Couch of Switch. We were just getting started and Switch, you know, still a very popular band. And I remember talking to Brian and say, what's the secret? And you know what he said? Don't break up.

Chad Bourquin (32:31.5)
Yeah. Yeah.

Keith Sauro (32:32.92)
I said, wow, that's crazy. And he goes, if people, and I don't mean that you're always gonna have the same members. People change. What we do is hard, right? Families, life changes that sometimes pulls you away from being able to do this. But stay together as a unit and make sure your set list is king. Don't play personal favorites just for the sake of playing a personal favorite. Don't fool yourself.

People wanna know the songs from Jump. Play what you think people want to hear. And when you play what people want to hear, you just grow that much faster. A popular set list is king. That and don't break up. know, communicate, stay together, communicate and work together as a unit to get there.

Chad Bourquin (33:25.4)
Fantastic. Thanks Keith, appreciate you being on here. Yeah man. Keith Sarro, The Suburbans. You've been listening to Gig Soap.

Keith Sauro (33:28.494)
thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.