Girl Toronto
My buddy Michelle over at http://www.RAWartists.org, has once again contacted me about another talented band they are showcasing, this time out of Toronto, Canada. Girl, features Guy Rubino on guitar and vocals, Jean Sebastien Roy with more guitar and vocals, Grant Brain Scott playing drums, James Atin Godden on keyboards, and Joe Gervasi handling the bottom end. Here’s a little back and forth with the front man, Guy Rubino.
Tony Coke: Do you think there are any advantages or disadvantages of being from a major market such as Toronto?
Guy Rubino: The advantage of being in a band in a large city like Toronto are the obvious ones, more venues to play, influential radio stations, home to many record labels and of course a larger audience to play for. But the disadvantage is there are many more bands to compete with and therefore getting noticed in the crowd is much harder.
The internet allows us to enter the market easily but without either hiring someone to do your social media or assistance from a strategic partner (like a record label or promoter), you’re left out there alone so to speak. In this day and age, you literally have to look at a band as a entire company, you need marketing, advertising, and financial strategies over and above content. The internet hasn’t in my option knocked down the borders when your starting out, I think once you have gained popularity in one city its much easier to scale your product and the internet then becomes way more effective in knocking down those borders but only after the fact.
Tony Coke: Girl has been getting some spins on 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, have you seen a rising in web traffic because of that, and have you converted any of that traffic to fans?
Guy Rubino: Yes once we had made the Top 20 in 102.1 ‘s Next Big Thing Contest we did see quite a bit of traffic from radio play. We as a band in general, capitalized on the success of making the Top 20 through social media. Getting that acclaim from 102.1 really helped to legitimize our efforts to date. It also opened the doors introducing us to new promoters in the city, who then in turn booked gigs for us to play in venues we had never played before.
The opportunity to enter the contest was a natural process, as in reality, their are only a few stations our music is geared too and 102.1fm is definitely one of them. I was literally driving in my car heard about the contest and entered as soon as I got home.
Tony Coke: Your have a show coming up Sep. 11th at the Mod Club, with the RAW: natural born artists organization. Have you played one of those events before? How did that come about?
Guy Rubino: Yes, we did a RAW Event back in May and it was a glowing success for all parties concerned. Michelle Bylow was coordinating that event and she was familiar with Girl’s music and thought it was a good fit. Clearly she was right as the response we received from the audience was overwhelming. The whole evening in general for all artists was a hit and we are delighted to do it all over again…
Tony Coke: The image you use on several of your social media sites, is an old photograph of a young girl. Is that girl someone special?
Guy Rubino: The name Girl originated by paying homage to all the women in our lives that have touched us in a positive way. This could be a mom, sister, girlfriend, wife, 1st grade teacher, famous musician, etc. We wanted to capture this women in her formative years on her way to greatness, hence the younger photo we used. The idea is with every release we send out there will be a different photo featured of a different girl. In this particular case we used Jean Sebastien Roy’s (one of the founding band member’s) mother.
Tony Coke: What is on the horizon for you guys after the RAW show? What are your goals for 2016, and how can people connect with you?
Guy Rubino: Our plan is to continue to build our audience which keeps growing at a steady rate. In order to do this we will to continue to play shows as often we can while reaching out through social media channels. We also will begin to look for strategic partners via promoters, and or a record label to help this process grow quickly. As I mentioned earlier, this is a business like anything else, and to expand, we need to either invest internally or work with equally savvy partners to ensure success. Knowing our work ethic, we will likely do both.
We plan to release our first video shortly, as well as a very socially interactive web site. The plan for 2016 is to record new music so that we can not only build our audience but keep the ones we have now. Currently we can be found on Twitter, Bandcamp, Facebook & Soundcloud until our website is up and running.
