Successful Musician Podcast Episode 60
Interviewee: Tory Smith
Interviewer: Jason Tonioli
Jason Tonioli
Welcome to the podcast today. My special guest is Tory Smith from Dallas, Texas. Tory is… Well, as we were talking, you’ve had a variety of things you’ve done over your career, but starting in banking, just like me, it sounded like. But we’ve also been to Costa Rica, which I love Costa Rica. We were talking about that. But the reason I really wanted to bring you on here is you’ve got a very, very cool, what I would call an innovative product for musicians. And wanted to talk a little bit about that, but it’s called the Black Box, right? We’re going to get into that. Tory, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself, how you ended up getting into music a little bit, and then what brought you on this journey to create some really cool hardware to fix some problems that we all know exist for musicians out there if you’ve been playing or performing for very long.
Tory Smith
Yeah, absolutely, Jason. Well, hey, thanks for having me. It’s an honor to be on your show. Yeah, gosh, how do I get started in music? I’m a cover band musician. I’m in two bands in the Dallas area, two cover bands, that is as a ’80s cover band, another is a ’90s country cover band. I got started. I remember when I was in college, and I was old enough to drink, finally, and I’d go to the pubs, and I’d see these cover band musicians playing songs that everybody would recognize. I just was glued to them. I was mesmerized. I was like, This is such a cool thing. I would talk to them during break, and I was like, How cool is it to play music that people recognize, they can have memories together, have a beer over, and they actually get paid to do it, and people tip them and they get invited back. Everyone typically has such a great time when these cover bands play. I thought as a young 21-year-old, I was like, how cool would it be if I could do that someday? I was like, oh, I’ll never be good enough.
Well, fast forward now, I’m in my 40s, and I played guitar since I was a teenager
But my brother was this really talented singer, and He ended up sounding so good. I was like, you’ve got to join the band, man. I don’t want this voice to go to waste. We started a cover band together five years ago. It was really interesting because when we first started, he didn’t want to be that guy stuck behind an iPad or a smartphone looking at his lyrics because there’s well over 50 songs that he’s supposed to commit to memory. Then especially if somebody requests a particular song, he’s not going to necessarily know it verbatim. He didn’t want to be that guy with that look where he’s squinting and he’s swiping and all that. He went to his garage and got a shipping box from Amazon out and cut it up and put black duct tape all around it. Then he set his iPad inside of that cardboard box and set it on the floor, and he bought this Bluetooth page and that became his poor man’s teleprompter. I thought, Man, what a great idea because people have no idea he’s using any teleprompter. I thought that was pretty novel of him. But then fast forward to about a year ago, I was showing a buddy of mine what he was doing, and he was like, Oh, my gosh. We shook our heads. We’re like, there’s got to be a better way. That’s when we decided to build our own teleprompter with a bunch of intelligence in it, the smart teleprompter that you can control with foot pedals. We’ll talk a little bit about that today as well.
Jason Tonioli
Very cool. So, I love to see people innovate. I mean, I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time, and one of the things I’ve realized over time is people talk about doing businesses, but a real entrepreneur is somebody who sees a problem, and they’re like, I’m going to fix that thing. I’m going to take responsibility for solving that problem for the world. I feel like that’s exactly what you’ve done in this case, which is awesome. Talk a little bit about the story about making that box. How does that all come together? Because a lot of us, I think, who are listening are probably just musicians, but I don’t think a lot of people appreciate what actually goes into making some awesome hardware, whether somebody’s making an instrument or making a hardware or making a software. You got to share your story about how this all came to be with being in the garage and your buddy. It’s an incredible story.
Tory Smith
Absolutely. Yeah. Picking up from earlier when I was showing my musician friend of mine, I talked to him during break, one of my gigs, and he saw this wrapped up box in duct tape. I said, Man, there’s got to be a better way. Well, he’s Oh, my gosh. He goes, Just this past week, I tripped over this big clunky box. It was from overseas. I won’t mention the name. But it was a very, very basic box where it just pretty much shows picture files. It didn’t really have any intelligence built in. Yes, it was a teleprompter, but it was very rudimentary. My buddy happens to be a very, very intelligent, brilliant, brilliant mind, one of the top ranked software engineers in the world. The very next day, he ended up going into his garage, making some sketches on what this new teleprompter could look like, and ended up getting a CNC router, started cutting out the wood, started putting prototypes together. When he wasn’t working on the hardware, he’d be working on the software. Basically, there’s a motherboard inside and he’s a big Linux developer. This was all built on Linux. Everything’s open source, which for those of us that aren’t super nerdy when it comes computers. That means we don’t have to spend lots of money or any money on licensing to Microsoft or any of these other big companies, which, by the way, all the software that comes bundled on this thing, you turn it on, the software is ready to go. There’s no monthly service. There’s no monthly subscription you have to subscribe to. It’s just ready to go, which is another cool thing, too. When any updates that we add to this thing, we don’t charge for it. It’s completely free service.
Jason Tonioli
Well, and so if I’m a gigging musician. I mean, I’m just thinking a lot of people have… I mean, we’ve all got our phones, we’ve all got our iPads. Some of the challenges, I mean, there’s some really great apps that have been developed to make it really easy to search and find stuff. The black box prompter that you have, it’s much, much bigger. So, you got bad eyes, you’re old, it’s going to be a lot easier to look at, right? So that’s one of the things. I mean, there’s, I guess, just tell a little bit about what it is. And for those that are looking at the video, we can see this in the back. So, if you want to check out the video or just go look online to go check this out. But I just think, how are you going to convince me if I’ve got my phone or my iPad? Why would I want to consider something like this? And what are the things that would make it special? Absolutely. Probably you may not even realize you have.
Tory Smith
08:00 Well, for starters, having that iPad or that in your face that’s blocking the view of the audience. It’s just a bad look. First of all, it’s distracting. Second of all, the audience is like, what is this, karaoke night? I thought it came to watch a light performance. It’s not somebody to read off of a screen. Again, there’s no shame in having a teleprompter. I’m not dissing on anybody using a teleprompter or a visual cue. I mean, your pros filling out arenas, A vast majority of them use teleprompters, and there’s no shame in that. I want to nip that in the bud. 08:30 Why would we need something different when an iPad and the app on iPad does all that already? Well, again, it’s in your face, it’s blocking the view, and it’s just a very unprofessional look. By having a black box prompter with you, first of all, it’s on the floor. Now, I’m going to try to illustrate with my words here. This is Baltic birch plywood. It’s a very thick, rugged box. It’s a very well-built It’s handcrafted by Master Woodworker in Texas, and it’s using Duratech speaker paint. If you’re not familiar with that speaker, that’s your traditional standard speaker paint that all the speakers use, speaker manufacturers use. From an audience’s perspective, it looks like a speaker wedge. They have no idea it’s actually teleprompter. They think it’s just another floor wedge, another speaker on the floor, and it blends in the floor, and it’s black. Hence the name of our company, Black Box.
On the front side, we have a 24-inch shatterproof shield. This is polycarbonate. I like to call it polycarbonate because this is the same stuff that you see the TVs on the patios at restaurants to weatherproof the screens. Very, very sturdy material. It’s shatterproof, and it’s different than Plexiglas. So, Plexiglas is good, but polycarbonate, what we have here, is 30 times stronger. A true story. A couple of months ago, we had a customer who said that his keyboard players microphone stand fell down right onto his prompter, and it just bounced right off. It didn’t scratch the thing. Nothing busted. That was a true testament of how sturdy these things are.
In the corners, we have four magnets. We have a magnetic cover that goes on this to help protect the screen. On the side, we have an HTML port to connect additional boxes to. We also have an audio jack. If you want to connect a speaker to it, you can certainly connect speakers to this. Now, you could have karaoke in a box. A lot of folks that want to just pull up YouTube or even as a hobbyist, you want to throw a party, you could connect a speaker to it, pull up YouTube, and now you have instant karaoke in a box, if you want, as another use case. But the main use case we’ve seen, we’re targeting, we’re talking to a lot of folks in cover bands, original artists as well who maybe have some new music, and they don’t. Maybe they don’t have all their lyrics memorized just yet. We’re talking to churches as well. A lot of church musicians, maybe they’re not top-tier professionals, right? They need a little bit of a crutch or assistance. We have great features for them where you can actually have multiple boxes and synchronize them. You can have one your worship leader in charge, and then they can change the pages for everybody, and they’re all synced wirelessly. There are some cool features built in like that. You can have multiple boxes.
If you’re guitar player, you can appreciate that we have an auto transpose feature. How often does your singer say, Oh, wow, that’s too high. Can you bring that down half the stuff? Yeah, absolutely. You can go in within a couple of clicks. You can change your chords and it’ll transpose all the chords automatically within seconds. Nice. Some other features that you just really… Outside of an iPad, right, you’re just not going to find anywhere else.
Jason Tonioli
That’s incredible. It’s something that I think we all know that there’s an issue, but unless you’re running the big arenas, and they have the TVs built into the floor, so you don’t even realize they’re there. There’s not a lot of great options to get away from that iPad if you need your clutch, right? That’s awesome.
I’m curious. So, with the podcast, one of the couple of questions I really like asking. One is if you could rewind the clock back 20 years. You’re in your 40s, I think. If you were sitting in front of the 20-year-old you that’s just a young person trying to decide, gosh, do I want to do music or should I do music, or just what should I do? Or maybe you’re just in a room of college kids even that’s thinking about doing music or just likes music, what advice would you have for those individuals?
Tory Smith
Well, you’re going to hear a lot of advice that there’s no money in music. We’ve all heard that. Unfortunately, a lot of people listen to that. What I would say is, Man, if it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. Who am I or anybody else to tell you otherwise? I’m a bit of a visionary. I’m also a dreamer. Do what you feel is right, what’s in your blood. Don’t go to a 9:00 to 5:00 working for the man if you absolutely hate it. That being said, if you’re in your 20s and you’re starting to adult, I’m using adult as a verb, for the first time. You get expenses and maybe apartment rent and all these things. Yeah, maybe music doesn’t pay the bills in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t chip away at it as a side hustle. Go do the 9:00 to 5:00 or an Uber, whatever it takes to pay the bills, but don’t give up on that dream of music. I would say just keep at it but definitely have something to help pay the bills. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do both.
Jason Tonioli
I think a lot of the times when I talk to people, they’re like, well, I just don’t have time. There’s definitely seasons of life where you have less time. Sometimes you’re going to school, you got kids, you’re working 40, 50 hours. But what I’ve realized over time is you find time for the things you really want to do. The consistency, I feel like, is what really creates, especially with music, you’ve got to be consistent with it. You got to chip away at it. You’re not going to just become this amazing musician overnight. It takes a lifetime, I feel like. I still don’t feel like I’m there, and I’ve been at it for too many years now.
Tory Smith
Or you get humbled by watching a 12-year-old educate you on these savants, these prodigies that are just running circles around you. We didn’t have that as teenagers. We didn’t have YouTube as teenagers, but now it’s like, holy smoke. Some of the talent that you’re seeing.
Jason Tonioli
A piano teacher might have just talked about, oh, there’s some little kid somewhere, six-year-old that can do it. You’re like, Yeah, right. Whatever. Now you actually see them do it and they’re like, Okay, yeah.
Tory Smith
I tell myself, 15:11 Man, don’t get discouraged. Just keep doing what you love. Not to sound cliché, but it’s… Again, if it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood, and keep at it because if it’s what brings you joy, don’t stop doing that. Yeah, there’s certainly ways to make money, even if it’s getting into a cover band and then maybe inserting a few originals, getting your foot in the door, and then you get invited to play a private party or a wedding or something like that, which I have been very, very fortunate with my cover bands. We’ve quadrupled some of our sales because we started in the pubs, and then we would get invited to do a corporate event or something similar. There definitely can be money in it, but it’s going to take work. Obviously, like you said, Jason, it’s not an overnight success.
Jason Tonioli
One of the things I really like talking to people about is the podcast is called Successful Musicians. You were just talking a lot about, Oh, success, you got to be able to make money. I’m just curious, what would you define, now that you’ve had a chance to work in a lot of areas, you’re doing the music thing, too, but what do you define for yourself, I guess, as a successful musician?
Tory Smith
16:29 I would say that earning any kind of money playing music, to me, is a success. It might be a small win. It might be somebody coming up and tipping you a $20 bill. Now, you’re not going to be able to buy a house with that. I get that. But the fact that somebody’s willing to reach in their pocket and give you money or buy you a round of shots or whatever it is, to me, that’s my definition of success. It’s also me of being a professional musician because you’re getting paid to provide a service. I know that it seems like it’s setting the bar low, but for me, no, 17:13 I see success in the small wins, getting on base, getting to first base with that. You’re not going to hit a home run every time. But to me, that’s success.
There’s a story, speaking of getting tips as a cover band musician, there’s a story I want to share that happened a couple of years ago. My ’80s band, we got a $1,000 tip, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. During break, my sound guy came running frantically over. He says, hey, man, check your Venmo. This lady said she just tip you $1,000. I’m like, You’re funny, man. Keep me in my sound guy. Don’t go in a comedy. He’s like, No, I’m dead serious. She said she tipped you $1,000. I’m like, Wait, what? Seriously? I pulled my phone up. I pull up Venmo, and sure enough, it says she tipped a thousand bucks. I’m like, Is that a typo? Was it $100? Did she mean to tip $1,000? I said, come show me where she’s sitting. I want to go talk to her. She had already stepped outside, but I talked to her friends. I said, what just happened? She goes, I’m going to tell you, her husband passed away a month ago, and this is the first time she’s been out with friends. She’s been very depressed. But you guys met such a smile on her face, and she’s had the best time. She said she really wanted to do something special for the band. That moment, it wasn’t the money. It wasn’t the money that just almost made me choke up. It was that we made that impact, and that music can have that impact. Here I am just doing my thing in front of a bunch of drunk people every weekend. But there was this one person that was so touched and so moved that she felt compelled to treat the band to this massive amount of money that I was not expecting. It was It was a reminder. It was just a sobering reminder on how music can touch people. I’ll never forget that moment. It was a very awesome feeling.
Two days later, three days later, I kept checking it. Did she withdraw it? Did she have buyer’s remorse? Did she wake up sober? No. Of course, she didn’t take it back. It stuck. But it was a very, very heartfelt reminder how music can really, really move people. Jason, to me, in a way, I would say that’s a success as well, to see how we can really touch people like that through music.
Jason Tonioli
I love that you shared that. In listening to you say that story, what’s funny is, as you were sharing that, your whole demeanor, your whole face just lit up and as much as we were just talking about, oh, I got $20 or whatever amount of money or tips, whatever, I can tell that’s awesome to get those. I think the money side validates Like, you know what, I’m good enough. I’m good enough to be a professional but I think when most musicians really get down to the core of it, I feel like we’re sharing part of ourselves when we perform music. Especially with light cover bands, it’s your version of it. You may change it up a little bit. It’s your own personal touch on that connection you’ve had with that song. I think it’s just so cool when we can share those type of feelings and moments with people. When you do know that it impacts somebody, that’s like, man, that’s what it’s about. That feeling beat, I don’t know. For me, the feeling of knowing I helped somebody beats out that, probably even beats out that $1,000 tip for you. I bet you if you really get down to the core of what mattered to you, the tip was awesome. I mean, you’re going to remember that forever. But, man, knowing that you helped that lady, that’s what you remember.
Tory Smith
Yeah, exactly. It was almost like a defining moment where it almost like our show pulled her out of that state of depression, at least according to our friends, on how good it made her feel for her to feel motivated to do something like that. Now, speaking of engagement, so that’s one thing I really like to talk about with my bandmates. I think we’ve seen success early because I said, Guys, during break, don’t go outside or go smoke your cigarettes. Go interact with the crowd. Just be yourself. Be humble, be approachable, be genuine. Because we all like to feel like we’re rock stars for a couple of hours on stage, sure. But break down the barrier and then just go be human and talk to people on break. Oh, my gosh, they light up. They think, wow. Because for a couple of hours, they look at you, even though we’re just little local cover band musicians. They really, they’re in the moment. They look at you like you are Steven Tyler. We’re the furthest thing from that.22:11 But the short of it is being approachable, being human is everything, and so engaging with them.
Back to the black box prompter for a second, I do want to mention something that helps with engagement or will help with engagement. We’re about to launch here the next month or so, and this doesn’t exist anywhere else. I didn’t tell you about this Jason, and you’re on Pins and Needles. Where is he going with this? We’re going to offer something really unique here pretty soon. We’re calling it Sing-Along. Already, the prompter will have your lyrics, and you can turn the pages. But how cool would it be if you’re in the audience and you can scan a QR code, and you can bring up the same lyrics in real-time that the musician sees on stage? When that singer turns the page, it turns for you. You don’t have to search for it. You don’t have to even so much to scroll. You just scan the QR code, boom, the lyrics are right there. Now the audience can actually see the words because a lot of times they mouth the words or they forget how the bridge goes. Whatever it is. But now they have the words right in front of them. That’s super cool. That’s another feature that will help engagement.
Then there’s another feature down the road we’re going to offer. This exists on the iPad, but we’re going to be adding it to our box before the year’s is being able to request a song and tip the band. Scan a QR code, you have it tied to Venmo, Apple Pay, whatever, and you can tip the band. You want to request Sweet Caroline. Hey, Jason, thanks for Sweet Caroline. Your request. I appreciate the tip. This next one’s for you. That thing. And so, on the Blackbox, we see exactly who made the request, how much they tip, what song they requested. And then boom, it’s all just turkey.
Jason Tonioli
That’s super cool. I do very few gigs, but I’m definitely me a business guy, and really, I’ve coached a lot of artists over the years. And one of the places I feel like most artists fail miserably is in collecting the name and the email address and phone number of their audience. You go do a big old show or somebody goes and opens and they’re not there to see you, but people really… I’ve had some of these. I’ve been to shows where the opening act I like better than the actual group we went to see. And it’s one of those where you’ve got everybody that’s engaged there. They want to connect with you. And from the stage, people fail miserably. So, the idea of actually having the lyrics, I think that’s a huge added bonus that people could have. But what I’d love to see, and you can go build this. Please, please fix this problem. Give the ability to have that web page, embed a form so that that artist with whatever platform they’re using, whether it’s HubSpot or Salesforce or go high level. I mean, there’s a lot of really awesome CRM systems out there that allow you to collect the information, and you just embed that for them. Here’s the email. And by the way, when you do this, I’m going to give you a bonus. You’re going to get the lyrics, but I’m going to also send you this cool sheet music for the thing I’m doing. There’s so much you can do to add value so that those people want to engage. And the real value is in when you have that new song come out as an artist, or if you have something cool going on, you’re going to do another show, well, your fans want to know about it. And rather than having Facebook be the owner of that data, and if Mr. Zuckerberg decides, We don’t like you anymore. You’re gone. The reality is all these stupid social media platforms, YouTube, whatever, you don’t own that page. And you don’t even have access to it. I mean, Facebook used It would be great because everybody would see it, but now you got to pay money just to have people see your posts. And then if you’re lucky, you get like one 20th of those people to even see it, which is just so hard to connect as an artist. So the more you could help the artist connect via collecting emails, that’d be huge.
Tory Smith
Yeah, that’s super important. I agree. I think we certainly should do a one-time sign up. Hey, to use this feature, give us your email, your name email. And that’s all. We’re not asking for their first born. It was just name an email. Then, of course, they need to connect it to some payment method. Obviously, they end up doing the requests. But for the singalong feature, that would be super easy. On that note, though, we also If you’ve heard of Bands in Town, Bands in Town is a free service. Now, they have a premium service as well. But even the free service, you can put a widget with a form and capture email addresses, and they will send out the emails on your behalf. You don’t even have to send the emails. You just publish your upcoming dates, the venue, the time and date, and boom, the week of or leading up to the event, they’ll send it out to your entire mailing list, which is fantastic. We’ve I’m using that. We’ve seen success with that as well.
Jason Tonioli
Just rewind them back a little bit. You were talking about telling your band members, go out and engage with the audience and just be human. It’s so often where I feel like as an artist, There’s this imposter syndrome that I feel like most artists feel. They’re like, Oh, I’m not good enough to be up here. And so that’s difficult. But I feel like the reason people like you, usually as an artist, is because you do have your flaws. You think of all these really well-known people, and the reason we probably like them is they have some of the same flaws that we have. I think as artist, it’s super important to remember, go be yourself and don’t shy away from the problem. We’ve all got our demons. We’ve all got things that maybe definitely aren’t perfect about us. But being willing to take that on, I feel like, is one of those… If I’m looking at advice that I’ve had over the years is be yourself, be human, and don’t be afraid to share your story, and it’ll connect with people. The crazy thing is people need to hear those types of things. Those things you’ve gone through and maybe had a hard time with are probably the things that are going to help somebody else down the road, maybe avoid the landmine you stepped on, being dumb as a younger us, right?
Tory Smith
There you go. Yeah.
Jason Tonioli
No, I love it. If People want to check out and learn more about this Blackbox Prompter. I know you guys are going to be at NAM, coming up here. But if they just want to go check out, I know you’ve got… Where’s the best place for them to go check it out? Or is there a place they can demo it or see these in? People are starting to use these more and more now, but where do they go online?
Tory Smith
The website is just simply blackboxprompter.com. There’s all kinds of videos and testimonials, and you can see all the features. We barely touched the surface on all the cool things you can do with these boxes. They’ve got a lot of intelligence built in. But anybody looking to give a better performance without hindering the view of the audience, I would definitely give it some serious consideration. If you play in a church, talk to some of your fellow members there that might be interested in going in as well because, again, multiple ways to really take full advantage of it without hindering that view. Yeah, blackboxprompter. Com.
I also want to mention, if anybody’s listening to this particular podcast and you are wanting to purchase one, you can get 10% off your purchase simply by entering the promo code, SUCCESS. That’s awesome. Just the word success, and that’s That’ll knock 10% off. If you’re in the US, within the 48 continental states within the US, we also take care of the shipping for you. No charges on shipping either. Yeah, super cool product. Very, very proud of it. We We’re really working hard to make this the industry standard so we can remove these tablets, or music stands from the stage as much as possible so that musicians can really get the best and be super successful.
Jason Tonioli
These things, they connect to the pedal. I mean, you guys have built in the pedal that’s going to help drive a lot of this, too, if you’re the guy on the stage, correct?
Tory Smith
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, think of this as a three-button mouse, right? Yeah, it’s just a three-button pedal. We actually have a new version coming out that looks like a stop If you’re a guitar player, you know what I mean? That’s your typical push-button switch because this can be sensitive. But yeah, you just navigate. You go back with your left, you go forward to the right, you hit enter in the middle. Real easy to use. Now, we do also include a keyboard, a trackpad. If you need to edit a setlist or edit a song without going back and forth with your computer, you can do that on the fly directly on the box. You can actually go in and make edits. We try to make it super simple. You don’t I have to be a computer expert to learn these things. But if you ever get stuck, there’s a ton of how-to videos on the website that will walk you through everything.
Jason Tonioli
Cool. Well, Tory, I know we’re about out of time but thank you for just being willing to try and fix stuff. I feel like far too often people like to complain these days, whether it’s going online, and whether your name’s Karen, whatever, all the funny stuff that is really out there. But we’ve all seen the complainers, but I just applaud you for being willing to see a problem, dive in and try to fix it and do your best to do that. I hope, if not anything else, that this interview just inspires people to be like, You know what? I’m going to be willing to… That’s my problem. I’m going to make it better. And thank you for making an awesome product for musicians. I love it. We need more of that out there because that’s how everything improves in the world these days.
Tory Smith
Absolutely. My pleasure. And hey, thanks for spreading the word on some of these innovative tools and whatnot to help us out. I really appreciate what you’re doing as well. So thank you for that, Jason.
Jason Tonioli
Happy to do it. Thanks so much again, and we’ll see you guys on the next one.