An Interview With Future Joy

Up and coming musical duo Future Joy has been blazing a trail of success for themselves for the past 2 years. They’ve began making quite a name for themselves in a relatively short amount of time and have become one of the most exciting funk and bass music duos to keep our eyes on. 

We’re thrilled to say that we’ve recently had the chance to get to know them a little better and ask a few questions in the form of an email interview. The eclectic duo filled us in with the details behind their newest single “Triple Stack” featuring Vibe Street. They’ve also let us in on some of their biggest musical inspirations as well as some backstory on themselves as artist on their journey into and through the music scene both as individuals and as a duo.

Interview: Future Joy

Party Guru Press: Lets start by talking about your newest single “Triple Stack” with Vibe Street. The song is funky and upbeat and seems like it would’ve been a lot of fun to work on…

-What was the best part of working on this new release?

-Is there anything worth telling telling about the creative process that shaped this one?

-What is your relationship with Vibe Street like and are there any plans to work with them again in the future?

Future Joy: We met Ben, aka Vibe Street at Mad Mountain festival in Casper, WY the summer of 2020. We brought our RV/renegade stage and were able to jam with him after his sets. We hit the road full-time shortly after.

In November we headed back to Colorado for some other recording sessions and got word that Ben and our friend Austin were working on music. We drove straight through from Arizona, arrived around 2am and started recording. We spent the whole weekend working on a few different projects but this song was the most fun.

Austin started with a ukulele bass line, Zach laid Baritone sax, Ben did the rap, Emily played the synth line and sang the backups, Kyle was there for moral support- the song was starting to take form. It was truly a family collab! We enjoyed our time hanging at Ben’s studio and I think we would all enjoy making another song together sometime soon.

 

Party Guru Press: So how did you two meet? what initially sparked your creative flow as a duo?

Future Joy: Zach attended a karaoke night that Emily was hosting in May of 2019. We both sang, then Zach asked her to sit in with his band the following night, and we’ve been making music together ever since. This was just the beginning. Now we’ve been living on the road in our RV for over a year and have played 80+ shows!

 

Party Guru Press: You are clearly both quite musically inclined; not just with music production but with actual instruments as well. Of course we know you love to incorporate the saxophone, which you seem to feature feature throughout the majority of your songs…

-So where did that all come from? What got you started playing music and specifically saxophone in the first place?

Future Joy: Zach started playing saxophone in fifth grade. Emily started piano lessons in grade school and classical vocal trining in high school. We both spent the last 10 years as club/bar DJs. So we were well trained in the dj/electronic side, as well as many other genres of music.

Zach has always been playing sax with DJs, so combining the live element with the tracks just made sense. Emily had been singing in bands, and playing bedroom piano, so it also made sense to start combining everything. We added the piano to the set last winter and its been fun to watch the project grow.

 

Party Guru Press: How has your creative process evolved since you originally began your musical journey? Do you have a routine for producing? Also how does that reflect in your newest project?

Future Joy: Our only routine for producing is to get friends involved. Collaboration is really what takes our songs to the next level. On this project Ben and especially Austin wanted to stay behind the scenes though, so you only get his first name and no artist name. Hehe..

Party Guru Press: Who are your biggest influences or other artists within your genre that have helped inspire your style of music? And do you ever take influence from artist that aren’t necessarily in the same realm or genre that you produce? Have any of them added any additional inspiration to your new release? Or any of your releases?

Future Joy: Zach grew up in Denver playing funk, jam, and electronic. The scene in Denver is so eclectic it really helped him expand his sax playing and enjoyment of many genres. In electronic Music; Daft Punk, Deadmau5, and Excision are early inspirations. On the Sax Sonny Rollins, and Skerik are his big inspirations.

Emily grew up outside Chicago and House music runs through her veins. She had the chance to see world-class acts come through the city and takes inspiration from Anabel Englund, Nicolas Jaar, and Disclosure. She spent the past 9 years DJing and singing at weddings and corporate events so musical diversity was important. It’s fun to be able to play funk, pop, dance, house, rock, hip hop, dub, and bass all at the same party. We strive to stay eclectic in our Future Joy sets too.

Party Guru Press: So 2021 looks like it has been a busy year for you two… Whats been some of the biggest highlights so far?

Future Joy: We had some great shows and festivals this year. Notably: Fool’s Engagement Festival in Branford, FL and being able to fill-in last minute for Russ Liquid, opening for Manic Focus in Gainesville. FL. We also had a blast at our Denver homecoming at Your Moms House in July.

Party Guru Press: We see that you have a show coming up in Denver on October 15th at Summit Music Hall… Are you excited for this one?

-What can we expect to hear from you that night?

-Any chances of bringing out Vibe Street when playing that new tune?

Future Joy: We are sooooo excited for Summit! We got to link up with Float Like A Buffalo in Tulsa, OK last week and the show was huge energy. Denver get readyyyy!!! We plan to play high energy and show Denver a taste of everything we got. We brought Vibe Street to play the collab at our headliner back in July, but since we’re opening we probably won’t have features on October 15th at Summit. We may or may not be joining the Float guys for a special encore though, wink wink. Its also our last show in town before we head south!

Party Guru Press: Anything exciting happening for the remainder of the year? What plans or goals can you share with us regarding performances or new music leading up to 2022 and beyond?

Future Joy: Performing at Summit in Denver and then we truck it to 10.23 at VooSwar in Atlantic Beach, FL and then 10.28 we’re bringing our renegade RV stage to Hulaween. After that we have some festivals in December and February already coming together in Florida. We don’t want to see anymore snow, so find us down south for winter. 🙂 We have big plans of hitting every festival we possibly can next summer!

Party Guru Press: So tell us… how is your biggest canine supporter, Gus doing? Still Repping the “Future Joy” merch?

Future Joy: Gus is the best!!! We adopted him last October while on the road in Virginia. So he was there while the song was created. He loves the road and we truly think he saved ussss!!! FurrGusSon Joy our saviorrrr!!

Party Guru Press: Lastly, we’d love to know… would you two consider yourselves “Party Gurus”!?

Future Joy: We Definitely consider ourselves Party Gurus! We linked up for a stream back in 2020 and we’ve been on the guru train ever since. Woo! 

With all the excitement around their newest single as well as their ambitious plans for the coming year, Future Joy is without a doubt among the most exciting up and coming duos to look out for. Their future shows featuring their marvelously wide range of genres and high energy performances are something worth getting excited about. 

Their desire for a friends and family environment within each of their projects is admirable and inspiring, as is their passion for collaboration with equally exciting artists. Its clear that they thrive off of the creative freedom that comes with sharing thoughts and ideas with like-minded artists who share similar musical visions. That is something that reflects highly throughout their latest release. 

We’d like to thank them for their time spent getting back to us for the interview, and we thoroughly look forward to watching the progress of this incredibly promising duo. We’re wishing them the very best with all of their future endeavors. Thank you, Future Joy!

CHECK OUT THIS ARTIST!!!

LISTEN TO THEIR NEWEST SINGLE: “TRIPLE STACK FT. VIBE STREET”

CLICK HERE FOR SPOTIFY

CLICK HERE FOR APPLE MUSIC

OTHER LINKS:

LINK TO ARTIST WEBSITE: CLICK HERE

LINK TO ARTIST FACEBOOK PAGE: CLICK HERE

LINK TO ARTIST SOUNDCLOUD: CLICK HERE

Interview: Get To Know The Pop / Synth-Rock Band, Glass Cases.

Glass Cases is a pop / synth-rock band from Fort Collins, Colorado. Alex Van Keulen is bass/vocals, Austin Seitfert is piano/ukulele/spoken-word vocals, and Cameron Greene is the drummer. The vocals of Alex and the spoken-word stylings of Austin paired with the unique sounds of bass with ukulele and piano over the rhythm of drums gives Glass Cases a wholely original sound. Party Guru Productions had an opportunity to sit down with the band and do a short Q&A.

Image provided by Glass Cases.

How Glass Cases Began

To start, please tell me a little bit about yourselves and how you got into music.

Austin: “I’m Austin! I am the ukulele, piano, rapper of the band. I started playing the piano because my grandmother taught me at an early age. Later, I picked up the guitar and taught myself. After college, Alex and I got together, and we started playing more seriously and started a band”.

Cameron: “My name is Cameron. I got surprised with an electric drum set on Christmas when I was in 6th grade. That is how I started playing. My dad got it for me. I have been playing ever since then. I never really had formal lessons, but I have been playing consistently since then. And then, I played a lot for a church and different worship groups and stuff like that. I met these guys and started playing with them about three years ago”.

Alex: “I am Alex. I am the singer and I play bass guitar for the band. I grew up playing acoustic guitar, strictly acoustic guitar. It is kind of what got me into music and singing in general. Then, when Austin and I decided to start making our own music I dove into the actual computer side that Austin was pretty good at. Like, actually creating tracks. The more electronic side of music. I learned how to play bass once we actually started the band and got better at singing”.



Thank you for sharing that. Next, when and how did Glass Cases begin?

Austin: “It started when Alex and I played soccer in college. Soccer was our thing. We did it 24/7 and wanted to go pro. After college when that kind of died off we had all this drive to do something and we really didn’t know what to do. So, we just kind of threw it all into music. It wasn’t until I moved out to Fort Collins where Alex was living, cause he had a job up there, it wasn’t until then until we were like, ‘Hey! Let’s maybe just start a band and see where it goes!’ That was like three and a half years ago now. That’s crazy. But, that was kind of the beginning of Glass Cases. It wasn’t until a little bit later that we met Cam. Cam’s really good at telling this story so I think he should take over”.

Cameron: “I moved to Denver after graduating college about 3 years ago and I didn’t really know anyone. I got invited by some people that I had met through a variety of ways to what was basically a tea party on a Friday night. At this tea party I met Alex and Austin and they sang some tunes for everyone. Everyone was swaying and getting into it. I started talking to them and they told me that they didn’t have a drummer. We jammed the next day”.

It sounds like it was the middle of 2017 when everything started coming together?

Alex: “Yeah, and we met Cameron in September”.

Earlier this year you had an album release party at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver, correct?

Cameron: “We tried to. The show actually got canceled because of COVID”.

Glass Cases & COVID-19

That is horrible! So, what were you working on before Covid hit?

Alex: “We were finishing up the album and getting ready to hit it off with a bunch of shows. We wanted to continue our development in the live Colorado scene. I think with Red Rocks being the capstone to that it really changed our outlook. We have been kinda waiting on that ever since. But, we’ve made some nice adjustments to keep ourselves occupied and creative since live music isn’t an option right now”.

Austin: “It was a bummer because we had Taste of Fort Collins which we were the local winner of, we had a show lined up with CSU for a skate show, and we just started kicking it off. We had other small gigs lined up. We were about to hit the summer hard, maybe hit a few festivals, and then it all dropped”.


That’s rough. So, what have you been doing to work through the pandemic?

Cameron: “One of the biggest things that we had the opportunity to work on, which is weird because we just released an album not long ago, was working on a song. We were blessed in that because we had the opportunity to come together and work on that song and be able to record it even though COVID season is happening. Another thing that kind of preoccupied us was, with winning Taste of Fort Collins even though there wasn’t an in-person live show, we got to record a really cool video that was put up for the virtual Taste of Fort Collins. We’ve had some more time to focus in on social media presence. We’ve also been meeting up for band practice about every week or two just to stay connected and stay sharp and be ready to go for when places begin to open back up again”.

Alex: “Me personally, I feel like I was inspired by all that was going on to write this new song. I sort of feel like that is the making lemonade out of lemons sort of situation. Otherwise, I don’t know if I would have ever written a new song. That’s my silver lining of COVID”.

New Music Video


You guys just launched a GoFundMe page. Tell me about that and what it’s for.

Alex: “We are making a music video for the new song. The GoFundMe is to fundraise to help cover some of the costs. As you can imagine, we have income from shows. Every year we have had it tabulated, like a couple of grand that comes into the band and is purely our money to dispose of for band stuff, that disappeared this year. So, getting a little extra help from fans, friends, and family through the GoFundMe and just getting people involved and being able to give out some merch is what we’re doing”.

Cameron: “I think what we have kind of noticed is that a lot of bigger artist get sustained revenue from streaming and sales. But when you are local and smaller the biggest portion of our income had come from playing shows. With that being taken away we wanted to shoot a music video but it’s going to cost some money. We were like, ‘How much do we have in the fund? Oh, I guess we don’t really have anything because we haven’t made any money in like a year now’. So that’s basically really letting them know our story and seeing if there are fans and family out there who would be willing to support us to help us make it happen”.

What else would you like readers to know about your band?

Austin: “I just want people to know that we like to have a lot of fun with our gigs. We want people to move around and have a good time but also just dive into the music and let the words just sink in and affect them and see how they’re feeling about it and relate to it. Hopefully. Outside of that we just like meeting new people. We are a very social band. On Instagram, all of our followers, we try to connect with them and talk with them through DM. We’ll shoot a message to them and say, ‘Hey, how’s your day going?’ You know, ‘what’s going on with you? How are things?’ It’s just a really unique situation because this is the first band that we have ever been in and to have a following has been awesome! So, to connect with them and share, like some people share music with us, or I’ve had the opportunity to write music to one of our fan’s lyrics. It’s been really sweet. So, we just like connecting with the fans, meeting them, and also just having a good time at shows.

Photos By Jesse Haswell

That about does it! Be sure to check out Glass Cases on their social media below.

Find Artist On:

FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/glasscasesband

WEBSITE https://www.glass-cases.com/

SPOTIFY https://open.spotify.com/artist/1GVcV5AmbWXwGxW1MRVaTd

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