Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Pieper.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up a huge Beatles fan and, when I saw Paul McCartney in concert several times, he always looked like he was having so much fun on stage. I really admired his showmanship and the way he interacted with the audience. It always looked like he was having so much fun. I wanted to experience what it felt like to captivate an audience like that, so I started The Relics in May of 2017, when I was finishing up my last semester of college.
At first, I didn’t really have any expectations for the project, because the project truly did start from scratch. Outside of myself and former long-time member Evan Borgese, we did not have a set line up yet, and we had no prior connections to the Atlanta music scene. I just wanted to perform for people, even if we were just playing covers at open mics. But after I wrote “Baby Blue,” which was our first single, my vision for the band changed. Although I had been planning on working full-time with a campus ministry called Cru after I graduated from college, I decided to instead pursue The Relics full-time.
I didn’t know anything about booking gigs or finding band members but with some luck, and a lot of effort, things eventually began to fall in place. After I managed to line up several shows for us, a fabulous drummer from St. Louis named John Chambers auditioned for us and blew us away. He joined the band as a temporary drummer and just like that, we were off to the races. In the span of 6 months, we performed on UGA’s radio station, Smith’s Olde Bar, headlined a show at the famous Masquerade in Atlanta, played several festivals, and won a Battle of the Bands at MadLife Stage & Studios. That summer a killer lead guitarist named Mitch Pew joined the band and we added a full-time drummer named Greg Washington (“Rock Steady Greg”), who was both talented and seasoned. Both musicians were graduates from the Atlanta Institute of Music and both had played with many different projects in the past. Greg had even been featured on OutKast’s award-winning record Stankonia.
After spending several months cutting our teeth and playing live, we decided to hit the studio to record our first EP. Worship pastor and long-time Atlanta musician Sonny Lallerstedt produced the record, and renowned engineer Rodney Mills mastered it. Sonny really helped the songs come to life and gave me some very valuable insights on how we could improve our craft. We released our debut self-titled EP in February of 2019, and had an EP release show at the Music Room in Smith’s Olde Bar.
We played out as much as possible to promote the record and began to take our act on the road doing shows in Augusta, Athens, St. Simons, and Nashville. But despite the fact that we were beginning to grow as a more recognized brand in the Atlanta music scene, we hit a speed bump when, during the summer of 2019, when Mitch told us that he was going to be moving to Asheville, NC the following spring. But we quickly were back on track when another talented Atlanta Institute of Music student, Sean Maloney, joined the band to take over for Mitch on lead guitar.
At the beginning of 2020, things really began to heat up for us. We got the opportunity to open for the band “Radkey” at the Masquerade to start the year off (Radkey went on tour with the Foo Fighters this past year). For the first time in our band’s history, we were drawing a lot of attention to ourselves and were beginning to grow a real fan base. Our song “Roundabout” reached the top 200 on Honduras’s Spotify Charts.
We got back in the studio to record two new songs: “Addicted” and “Standing Tall” with the renowned Atlanta producer John Briglevich at Sonica Recording Studios. Sean and Mitch shared lead guitar duties on these two songs since Mitch had not yet moved away and had written most of the guitar parts for these two songs. It was a blast recording and mixing these songs. They were sounding incredible, and we were really excited to release them to capitalize on our momentum.
But then COVID hit and shut everything down. We decided to put releasing these new songs on hold until we could do in-person shows again. But we were determined to not let the pandemic kill our momentum. Since we couldn’t bring our music to people in person, we decided to bring our music virtually to people by doing live streams. And although lots of solo-acoustic artists were doing live streams at the time, we were one of the few bands in Atlanta to do them, and lots of people tuned in to watch.
We also made a few professional covers, including a video of Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and The Beatles’ “In My Life.” Doing all this helped us grow our online presence; and, since we were one of Georgia’s highest streamed artists according to ChartMetric.com, we were asked to perform at the iVoted Live stream. We shared the same virtual stage with The Drive-By Truckers and Billie Eilish during this live stream, and we were one of the highest viewed streams of the entire event!
This past year was without a doubt the most successful and explosive year in our band’s history. At the very beginning of 2021, The Relics took it to the next level with the addition of the very talented Andrew Cary on bass guitar, which added a whole new element of groove to the band. Since we could finally do in-person shows again we released our single “Addicted” in March and then released our A-Side single “Standing Tall” in June. We also shot and released a music video for Standing Tall, directed by Fernando Flores. Our song “Standing Tall” has been featured on both Atlanta’s Rock 100.5 and Winder’s WJBB 107.1 several different times and has over 26,000 streams on Spotify. It’s also received multiple write-ups and reviews.
In 2021, we played more out-of-town shows than ever before at places like The Hummingbird in Macon, Preservation Pub in Knoxville, Birdsong Brewing in Charlotte, gaining fans at each stop. We also had record-high turnouts for our two Atlanta shows at The Masquerade and Smith’s Olde Bar. But the most satisfying part of this past year has been the reaction of our audiences. As I said earlier, I started this band because I wanted to drive the audience wild. And the reactions we’ve had from audiences this past year have been out of this world. We’ve had people singing along to our songs, dancing, and screaming louder than ever before. We’ve even had fans travel all the way from Macon to Atlanta to see us perform.
We had a special moment when we played at Preservation Pub back on September 11th and we ended the night with a cover of “Wake Me Up When September Ends” to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11. It seemed like every single person in the bar was singing along to the song and it was very powerful. Heading into our fifth year as a band, it’s amazing to think about where we came from and where we are now.
I’m a blessed man to have the three guys I have in my band (Greg, Sean and Andrew), and I have God to thank for his faithfulness in bringing us all together. They are enormously talented musicians and the commitment they’ve shown to the band this past year has been incredible. They have shown up to every rehearsal enthusiastic and are always willing to do what it takes to grow and improve.
We have some exciting things coming this year and plan on doing even more tour dates. We’d love to get back to Knoxville as we had a blast performing there last September. We are planning on putting out some more music and we cannot wait for people to hear these new songs!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. I started the band from scratch while I was still in college. I only had a handful of friends that were musicians, and most of them didn’t really want to be in a band. So, I had to find members on Craigslist. It took a while for us to solidify a consistent and permanent line-up, but I’m glad that we stuck with it. As the band’s leader, I’ve had to make a lot of tough decisions, and have had to make a lot of personal sacrifices for the sake of the band. For the past two years, I’ve been working full-time selling group health insurance to businesses. So often, I’ve had to burn the candle at both ends to keep up. My other bandmates also work full-time, so we’ve all had to be very committed to rehearsing consistently and have had to sacrifice a lot of time from our personal schedules to perform regularly.
But I really think all the adversity we’ve been through has made us better. It’s taught me how to motivate and lead the band. And we’ve all learned valuable lessons that have made us tighter as a unit. We all have developed this mentality that we’ve been brought together by fate and are a band of destiny. We truly believe that the best is yet to come!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I would describe the music of The Relics as “The Beatles meets Green Day.” We all have roots and influences in classic rock but we are also highly influenced by 90’s and 2000’s alternative rock. So, our music is kind of a unique blend of the two. We like to write songs with catchy guitar parts, groovy bass and drum parts, and songs that utilize vocal harmonies. Our music is very melodic and has a certain anthemic characteristic. Our songs are easy to remember and to sing along to. A lot of our songs like, “Standing Tall,” are positive songs about overcoming adversity, which is just the message I think people need to hear right now with the state of the world. We also have a lot of songs lamenting relatable frustration, like “Roundabout” and “Addicted.”
I think something that sets us apart as a band is just the way we perform. All four of us are natural performers, so we just feed off the audience. The more excited the audience gets, the more energized we get. We also make sure that our sets flow well. We like to do a lot of song medleys and have songs flow into each other. We work intentionally on our performances in rehearsal because we want our presentation to be very professional. We want to be something that the audience has never seen before and want the level of our play to be larger than the room we are performing in.
What I’m the proudest of is that we are beginning to now see the fruits of our labor. Hearing our song “Standing Tall” on a major radio station like Rock 100.5 was probably one of the most rewarding feelings I’ve ever experienced; and the joy I get from seeing an audience react to our music can’t be put into words. It’s just something I try to drink in every time I experience it.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Wow, that’s a tough one. I guess there would probably be a few: I remember playing hockey and getting introduced at a Thrashers game when I was in 5th grade and going to my first Georgia football game with my dad when I was in first grade. Go Dawgs! I don’t know if this counts as childhood but seeing Paul McCartney in concert for the first time as a freshman in high school was definitely a life-changing moment for me.
Pricing:
- CDs – $10
- T-shirts – $10
- The booking fee is subject to negotiation
Contact Info:
- Email: therelics30@gmail.com
- Website: https://therelics.
net/ - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/the.relics/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/therelics247 - Twitter: https://twitter.com/
the_Relics - Youtube: https://www.youtube.
com/channel/UCLEHbqvlq_ MhT8lzj7ogVDQ - SoundCloud: https://
soundcloud.com/joseph-pieper - Spotify: https://open.spotify.
com/artist/ 7wQTTgDatXdUPahDnAQwAT
Image Credits
Luke Usry and Festiviz Media
