E. 259: Austin Durry | Durry

Amy Gabay 00:00
This podcast is brought to you by People’s Food Co Op, a community owned grocery store in downtown La Crosse, Wisconsin and Rochester, Minnesota that promotes local farmers and producers through an emphasis on fresh, healthy, sustainable food. Anyone can shop, everyone is welcome. For more information, visit them online at PFC.coop. This podcast is also brought to you by Trempealeau County Tourism. Whether your idea of fun is bicycling, hiking or canoeing, afterwards head into the heart of one of their welcoming communities to experience historic architecture, independent shops and locally owned dining establishments. Visit Trempealeau County Tourism online. We got the opportunity to chat with Austin DURRY, one half of the band Durry. Formed in 2020. In the wake of the COVID pandemic, these quarantined siblings embraced openness, honesty and transparency in songwriting, and received a major boost from their viral Tiktok song Who’s Laughing Now. Check them out live at Mid West Music Fest coming up in Winona, Minnesota,. You can find more conversations, food reviews, live music and events on our website lacrosselocal.com. I’m Amy.

Brent Hanifl 01:12
And I’m Brent.

Amy Gabay 01:13
And this is La Crosse Local.

Brent Hanifl 01:36
My first experience with your music specifically was with Coyote Kid, Mild Music. Saw you guys play once, wasn’t actually going to go see you specifically, but caught you. But by the end of the weekend, I think we ended up seeing your band, probably three or four times. I think you have to play like half a dozen times in like a day, don’t you?

Austin Durry 01:57
Yeah, I remember that. We, that was I think we had three shows in one day. By the end of it we were all destroyed.

Brent Hanifl 02:06
But I mean, really, you know it was something that we ended up following that band or I did and my wife did. You know your social presence, just the way you interact with that is similar to DURRY in a way that it seems to be kind of like honest about kind of going after it, just being a band Why is sharing kind of important to your philosophy that kind of goes along with your music, I think that kind of has been referenced to your recent success?

Austin Durry 02:31
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, people want catchy tunes, but they also just want to, like, relate to you. And you they want to just, like hear the cold, hard truth about what’s going on and stuff. So you know, I think it’s a big proponent of sharing the music and sharing a part of ourselves with it and just, you know, being real about everything’s going on and how hard it is, you know, being abandoned, being on the road and all that stuff too.

Brent Hanifl 02:57
Just looking at, you know, Who’s Laughing Now, which I think was one of the biggest signals. Was it Tiktok that kind of kicked it off. What was that ride like? Or what does it look like now?

Austin Durry 03:05
Yeah, it’s been wild. Yeah, that song, you know, prior to that song DURRY was the goofy side project of Coyote Kid. And my sister and I had made a couple songs. You know, I think we had like, 60 monthly listeners at the time. You know, our Tiktoks were getting like, whatever, a couple 100 views, maybe. But yeah, then I posted just a demo of Who’s Laughing Now and it went viral on Tiktok, which is crazy. And then yeah, so we were like, okay, we should like capitalize on this, and try and finish the song and release the song as quickly as possible. So we ended up like calling up my buddy that we record with, and he cleared a schedule the next day, and we went in and recorded the whole song. And one day, the following day after it went viral. And then on the third day, he mixed it and we posted it just to Spotify. Like by the third day so I also went and got like the tattoo for the cover art and stuff like that all in that little three day period. And yeah, I think that speed really helped it so that when we posted it, it got on the playlist and got it gets really good because of all the Tiktok momentum. And then we posted a little music video that we made on my phone in our garage that like yellow backdrop one and that’s the one that went like super viral and that’s the one that now has like millions of views and and it’s just kind of been skyrocketing ever since that so.

Brent Hanifl 05:00
You know, what do you think from that song? What do you think it kind of related to people with?

Austin Durry 05:05
It’s kind of all about, like the life advice that a lot of us were given that feels irrelevant, you know what I mean? And like how it kind of pokes fun at some things and it’s like light hearted, but there’s kind of a serious core to it to talking about, like the struggles of, you know, the economy and the state of the world that we’ve inherited from the previous generation. The term who’s laughing now kind of flip flops of like, if it’s self deprecating or not, like, the first one is like, this is the state of the world, we can’t escape. You know, the daily grind. Who’s Laughing Now is like the joke of like, you were wrong, because we could make it but you were wrong who’s laughing now, we’re screwed. Like, you know, I mean, so. And then it kind of flip flops. And then by the end, there’s some hope to it. And there’s some glimmer of hope. And in the message, so yeah, I think people just relate to the feeling of irrelevant advice and a world left to us in shambles. And, yeah, people being wrong about stuff.

Brent Hanifl 06:08
You know, was this band kind of elevated in some sense, I guess due to time or anything related to like, COVID? Was there a transition period of spending more time with it? Or How was COVID for you?

Austin Durry 06:17
COVID was the reason this band happened. I mean, because it was like, I had booked a super long tour with Coyote Kid, to like all year on this tour, then it was summer of 2020, it was going to be like our time, right. So that I went down and all sudden I had all the time in the world. And so that’s when I started poking around with music software and learning about synths and kind of just goofing around. And that’s when I started making stuff I liked and showed it to my sister, and she started, you know, having feedback, and then it all just kind of grew out of just having the time for it. And and also just both of us being quarantined in the same house with nothing better to do.

Brent Hanifl 06:57
Kind of following along on your social media related to the shows you’ve been doing. You know, you have a show coming up at Midwest Music Fest in Winona. What can people kind of expect from your live shows?

Austin Durry 07:08
Yeah, you know, we we try to make our live shows really fun. We’re like, pretty new. Like, we’ve only been around for like a year. And that was a COVID year. So we’ve played a total of, I think 10 shows now, ever. So we’re pretty fresh. But yeah, our live show, we tried to keep it really high energy and really interactive. We have some little bits we do with the crowd and stuff. And so far, you know, the shows have all been really for like fans. So they’ve all been these big singalong things, which have been really awesome. Yeah, people show up and they know the words and they all sing along. And it’s this great community thing. And yes, that’s kind of what we’re, what we’re striving for is just having to be coming to be a big rock roll party, you know.

Brent Hanifl 07:52
And this is just kind of maybe a side, but what’s it like going from like, the suits, the black suits to like dad shoes, like New Balance and sweatpants?

Austin Durry 08:00
Yeah its been quite a shift. That’s kind of emblematic of the whole, the whole difference between the two acts of you know, Coyote Kid was all about the story, all about this kind of fantasy world that we had made this kind of like sci fi Western saying, and it was a really fun escape to do that. And it was fun to put on the costume and the like, cowboy hat and stuff and kind of play that character. And yeah, DURRY is just all about reality. You know, it’s kind of coming back to the real state of things. And, you know, being goofy and being ourselves and just put it all out there. And that’s where the, the dad shoes and the all that kind of look kind of happened just from like, be like, hey, let’s just be comfy, where we want to wear and not worry about it too much, you know.

Brent Hanifl 08:49
So what’s coming up? What’s next in the next year or two?

Austin Durry 08:52
I mean the next year is hard to say. Yeah, Mid West Music Fest is gonna be awesome. We’re playing Utepils Brewing in May, in Minneapolis, cooking up a bunch of shows actually have a meeting later today, with our booking agent to fit to make some plans. So we’ll be playing a lot of shows. We have like a ton of music in store that we’ll be rolling out slowly over the next couple of months. So maybe we can put out a full length album at some point. We’re like, pretty close to that many singles right now. But we’re trying to do that right, you know, put getting right with record labels and stuff. So but yeah, we’re playing just playing a ton of shows putting out a ton of content. Yeah, keeping the machine rolling, you know.

Brent Hanifl 09:31
So you know, it looks like people can follow you on pretty much everything. What’s your preferred thing that people can check out to get the initial effects of the band?

Austin Durry 09:40
Yeah, you know, Tiktok is definitely our biggest platform. Tiktok seems to be and that’s also where it posts the most and yeah, but also Tiktok is a little bit like following doesn’t mean that much on Tiktok, you won’t really see all our posts or whatever. So Instagram is kind of more if you want to really keep track of us and follow us in the future, Instagram is the spot to go. And we also started this new service in our link tree you can find it that’s, it’s like a text notification service so that every time we drop a song or every time we’re touring or coming to your town or whatever, it’ll send you a text just to give you the warning that we’re coming to or whatever it is. So that’s the most foolproof way to really not miss anything and keep track of that. You can sign up for that on our link tree thing.

Amy Gabay 10:29
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