Interviewing ‘Thru It All’: On crafting their sound and big plans for 2025

Can you tell me how the band was formed?

I’m the youngest in the band so the guys to highlight for this story are Daniel and Nick - they’re both 7 years my senior and grew up in a small town together in Tallagua, Oklahoma. They grew up playing music together and by the time they had graduated high school they started going their own ways - Nick went to LA and he was in another band at the time, and Daniel moved off to go do his own thing. Then fast-forward to 2020, when COVID had hit, Nick was in LA and realised the music scene was pretty desolate at that point - he moved back to Oklahoma and met up with Daniel and two previous band members. They had decided it was time to take this whole ‘band’ thing seriously, especially since during the pandemic the way that content was being made was changing drastically. I joined the band in late 2022, previous to that time Nick was filling the role of singer and drummer for the band - he reached out to me at the same time as I was leaving my previous project (of 8 years) called Goodfellow. Now, there are 3 of us in the band - Nick, Daniel and I. The band name ‘Thru It All’ comes from a saying that they had held onto back then - that after 10/12 years of being separated they came back through it all to end up here. 

How would you articulate your genre/sound?

This question is a tough one because our earlier stuff is definitely alt-rock, pop-punk but we’ve started to move away from that because we were situated in the small subgenre of pop-punk. A lot of rappers and pop stars at the time were dipping their toes into the pop-punk genre as we were shifting away from it, we’ve been mixing in hip hop elements, rap elements. We blend in a little bit of everything but it works well. Sometimes artists aimlessly mix in different genres and it doesn’t quite work, but I’m proud of the music that we produce - I feel like we blend it well. I’d still tell people our genre is alt-rock, but we’ve got so much more going on.

What does the songwriting process look like for ‘Thru It All’? Do you work on lyrics and music together, or individually bring finished songs to the group?

I think it’s pretty interesting the way in which we write songs, it’s definitely the best way for us to do it - it’s very much a collaborative process. We like to get together with a rough idea of the direction in which we want a song to go in - for example, with our song ‘Chaos Zen’ we were sitting in an AirBnb all day and night working on creating something together. We let the writing process unfold naturally, I don’t like to force things - work when the inspiration takes you.

What’s been the most memorable moment of your music career so far?

The touring has been great, we did a 30 day tour last year which followed the release of our full-length album. That was so fun, it was the first month-long tour I’ve been on - you meet so many people, it’s a great adventure. In terms of a specific venue that I loved playing, I’d say Cain’s Ballroom - my father and my friends were all there, it's a big venue in Tulsa where we’re from. 

What does it mean to you to be ‘successful in music’?

Everybody definitely has a different opinion on this, for me being successful in music is to make a living from playing/creating music. To be able to pay the bills, have some cash leftover - the same as any other job. I guess there’s a difference between being ‘successful in music’ and feeling ‘successful’ - to me ‘success’ is doing what you love, life can be really unfair sometimes so you need to seek out the things that make you feel happy.

If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring artists/musicians, what would you say?

People ask me this a lot and something I always tell them is that you have to figure out what you want from a career in music. There’s a lot of difficult things that have to be done to get to where you want to be - deadlines and busy tour scheduling. There’s a lot of things that have to be sacrificed - missing funerals, best friends’ birthdays, family events. Those are big things to sacrifice and not a lot of people truly want to prioritise their careers over those things. You have to be willing to drop everything to reach that level of success. People don’t want to live broke and so you really need to figure out what it is that you want from music because it's not going to always be glamorous or pretty. It’s okay to want to make music at home because making music as a career is hard. As a band we have a very specific goal in mind, so we know what it is that we want to do and how to sacrifice for that. 

How do you deal with the effect that pursuing a career in music sometimes has on your personal relationships?

The main thing is communication, to talk to those people in your life that may be affected by your career commitments. Nothing is ever going to be personal, there will be times where you miss things or choose the band over them, it’s harsh to say - but the band becomes your priority. It has to be worth it however, there are some show offers that may not be worth it and you’re allowed to say no too. A lot of people may simply just not understand what it is that you do - it’s not all glamorous, it’s not a vacation. You might play a show one night with hundreds of people, then the next night the venue has four people - four including the bartender. Not everyone knows or understands that side to this career. The right people in your life will understand the difficulty of the sacrifices that you’re making.

What’s next for ‘Thru It All’? Do you plan to release more music?

This year is going to be our busiest year yet, we’ve just announced a tour and have an EP that’s coming out ‘The Soundtrack of Endlessly Reinventing Yourself’ - it reflects a lot of different personal things that each of us went through last year. We also have a short movie coming out - it’s going to be a cheesy, funny film that showcases our individual personalities. It’ll be promoting our tours and the EP. We wanted to do something unique, different to the short clips that you might see on TikTok, we’ve recorded and edited the movie all by ourselves.

Ending on a fun question - if you had to build your dream tour lineup, which two acts would you select to open your shows?

James Brown and his band, specifically his band from the 1980s. And I’d also say Parkway Drive - I know the two of them are very different but I’d want to build a show with as much energy as possible.