18. Touring and Connecting with Audiences w/Infinitus Music

In this special episode of The Music Executive, host Cinnamon Denise interviews Infinitus, a critically acclaimed beatboxing string trio known for their unique fusion of classical, hip hop, jazz, and Latin music. 

The trio, consisting of John, Anthony, and Alex, share their journey from university friends to an innovative musical ensemble. 

They discuss the challenges they faced in creating their sound, their transition from senior outreach to educational shows, and their approach to breaking the 'fourth wall' in performances. 

The group also talks about their touring experiences, best practices, and humorous anecdotes, offering insights into the life of performing musicians. 

Additionally, they highlight their current projects, including a summer camp for aspiring string players. 

Chapters

• 6:32 Beatboxing in Infinitus
• 10:01 Crafting Unique Performances
• 16:41 Breaking the Fourth Wall in Music
• 19:26 Connecting with the Audience
• 22:44 Touring Best Practices

Transcript

This is The Music Executive, a show where we talk about gig tips, music, business strategies, songwriting experiences, collabs, and even more with industry professionals. Let's get into it. Hey, music Executive Cinnamon, Denise here. That's Cinnamon like the spice. And Denise, like Denise. And today we have a.

Special episode one, you're used to, our episodes being extremely, extremely short. So this one, I'm telling you now, maybe, I don't know, two minutes longer than the other ones. But regardless today we have Infinitus who is a critically acclaimed beatboxing string trio. They're really known for like the unique sound and their upbeat performance styles.

So they are, like I said, a trio. We have Adam, Alex. We have John, Anthony, and Alex. I was like, Ooh, who's a Adam? It's okay. Adam's coming later. He's, he's just a little bu behind. We have a big announcement people. We have a new member. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm not the host of the Ellen show, because I would say the wrong any who?

Hey, how y'all doing today?

Good. Good. So let's see. Let, um, Alex, you wanna tell us a little bit about the group, how you got started and what is Infinitus? I mean, I gave a little bit of a story, but I wanna hear from you. Sure thing. As you mentioned before, we are a very unique string trio in what we do by fusing together elements of classical hip hop, jazz.

Latin. Um, pretty much anything that we kind of like that we can try to make on our instruments and through our mouths and body percussion, we try to do. It wasn't always this way. When we first started, there was no handbook or any type of guide to take us to where we were because there was nobody in this group or no one in the world that actually does exactly what we do.

When you have three people who beatbox and play together. Most of the time in an acoustic setting, it's uh, it poses some very unique challenges at the time in getting started. A large part of what we do now is outreach, but when we first started we were doing a lot of things mainly geared towards senior outreach and fundraising events, and it was at some fundraising events that we met Sal Ferres, who is a fantastic musician and a connector.

He's a guy who is very good at. Helping to introduce groups to other people who may be able to benefit society in a, in a very special way. And so Sal was instrumental in introducing us on one of his listen up festivals, which is kind of a showcase for musicians to Kevin Bruce, who is our agent. And Kevin approached us after playing at one of these events and said, have you guys ever considered doing educational outreach shows for youth, teaching them what you do?

And while we hadn't done a ton of that sort of thing, we were totally interested in it. We, again, were doing a lot of senior outreach, and it was a good challenge for us to see what would happen if we started broadening our horizons, broadening our scope, so that we were basically hitting all ages from the very young to the young at heart.

Nice. So you started us with. Finding your agent and all these good things, but how did y'all meet? Well, I met Anthony in the womb since we're twins, and then John Anthony and I met in university together. Okay. Yeah, we, we hit it off right away. We're best friends very quickly I. Although we didn't do a ton of working together until a little bit after our undergraduate studies were completed.

Got you. So let me ask you, John, when you first met Anthony and Alex, what was your first impression of them? Like what, what did you really think? That's a funny story. So we went to the University of Michigan together a go blue and, and so I met. Anthony in the hallway and it was always this thing about, you know, Michigan where there was this very long hallway and so you'd be coming up to someone and it was always this big thing in the school is they're probably gonna speak and if they're not gonna speak, I'm not gonna speak who's gonna speak first?

So that'll come back in a second. I'll tell you real quick though. So we had a deal and me and Anthony together and I heard about, you know. Like these amazing players, they, Alex and Anthony came in like midyear, so I was kinda like a semester, you know, I'd been there a term before they were there. And so I'd heard about these guys or this guy that had came in that was phenomenal.

So Anthony and I ate dinner. We were, you know, hanging out, laughing, just instantly bonded. And then the next day, you know, I saw Anthony walking down the hall with a cello. I thought, wow, this guy's talented. Like, he's playing to be old and the cello. Oh no. So he's coming down the hall. We're doing that thing where like, you know, I is he who's gonna speak first?

You know, because it's that Michigan thing in the school. And then, you know, I was gonna put myself out there. Hey, like my new friend and Alex kind of gave me this, uh. Who I thought was, Anthony gave me this very kind of shady, like, you know, ah, he was nice. He wasn't mean, but you, it wasn't like as cool as I thought we were gonna be.

And I was like, oh, Anthony's really shady. Like yesterday he was like, so cool. Then today he like acts like he doesn't even know me. Of course, you know the end of the story. That was not Anthony. That was that, and that was the day that I found out that they were twins. That's funny. Okay. Okay, so that. That makes a lot of sense.

So let me just double check. There's no Adam in the picture. Where did I pull that name from? Actually, no, I knew what you were reading. It's Ady dom, you see do AOD dom, little dom. So there is on a way, three A's, but Ady Dom is an acronym for all day. I dream about music and it sort of become my. Adulthood middle name I guess you can call it.

Oh, okay. You see, music executives, they were about to throw me under the bus, but I did not mess it up.

I know. I didn't just make up this name. I spent so much time talking to you. I'm like, where did I, okay, audio. No, you got it. Got it. Okay, we're just messing with you. Got it? No, y'all are good. Y'all are good. So Anthony, tell me a little bit about how the group really started to develop. And I know we've gotten started years ago, many years ago.

I don't wanna say the number 'cause I'll probably be off target, but tell me about how you all really started getting started and what was the launch launchpad after you've met Mr. Bruce? Well, around the time that actually we met Mr. Bruce, we were just doing the corporate gig thing. You know, just trying to get by as a lot of musicians.

Then I remember we had a call, I think John, you and I had a call at some point and we started talking and then later on it was probably a week later, you and Alex had a call and we literally talked about the same thing, saying, man, in a perfect world, wouldn't it be cool to get like paid to play with your friends, like your best friends and just make your own music?

And that's actually how it started, actually started. So then of course, when Kevin Bruce. Came into the scene who's a booking agent once again, and he mentioned the, uh, the possibility of doing a trial tour. And he said, well, why don't we do a small trial tour? See how you guys do. Alex, I believe, called John and said, Hey, you know how that we were having that conversation, the.

How do you feel about flying up to Vancouver? And we kind of see what happens, and that's actually how it started. And we had to learn by doing very quickly because o obviously all three of us are classically trained, but we also appreciate all different styles of music. And so you start to pick up little things here and there like going, oh, okay.

I really appreciate how jazz musicians can go right off the top. It will just literally find the court structure and then just start improv right away and not necessarily because. For us. We were messing up so bad we needed to make something up to just make it through the, you know, the section, but like, wow, that was really cool.

The next thing you know, you know, we're doing a show Think Like up in northern bc I think it was terrorist, BC Jonas came across the music, said, Hey, why don't we do a hip hop myth? And we're playing and we're like. Kinda, I, I got this thing's kind whack. I mean, there's nothing to it, you know? It's like, and then we're like, it needs a beat.

You can't have hip hop without a beat. And then we started talking. We were like, Hey, have you ever a beatbox before? You know, this kind of thing. We're like, well, let's kind of figure it out. And literally in that hotel room back in what, January of 2007, we, we sat in a hotel room going, let's just figure out how to beatbox and play at the same time.

So the next day we're like, uh, we'll just see what happens. It'll be fun. And we, sure enough, we purposely programmed the hip hop medley and we drop the beat and we start playing and the crowd goes nuts. And we were like. Maybe onto something. Yeah. Because at that point we hadn't seen anybody do it. Now, obviously there's a few people out there right now who do it, but at that point in time, in January, 2007, we had up until that point, had never seen anyone do it.

That's right. With exception to our, our friend of ours who originally turned us onto that idea. Rodney Page, shout out to Rodney P. So all the way in Lansing, you know, he and his brother were kind of doing that like, I think late nineties, and so we were like, oh, let's, let's do it as an entire group. And see what happens.

And then it stuck so little by little things happen and I think for us it was never really, I would say we planned on doing this so much as it as it is sometimes the most creative ideas of birth out of necessity. And you realize that in the moment you're like, we gotta make this work. What we got, we got a violin of viol, cello, we got mouths.

Lord knows I don't wanna lug around a bunch of drum kit gear. No, no disrespect to the drummers out there. We love you guys, but you guys are expensive and you, you give have heavy gear, so, so essentially that's a lot of where we picked up some of these things and then we just kept going in that direction.

This sound that you hear is essentially infinitus. Although, I will say that it continually evolves, so we're always working on new things, cooking up something else. So talking about working on new things, cooking up new stuff. What is your process like, the tried and true process for preparing for a show?

Is it different every time? What? What do you do? What does that look like? It is indeed different. So usually when we do it, and feel free, guys, if you want to jump in. We usually look at again, what is the layout of the performance line going to be? Because we want to make sure that the performance that we give feels tailor made for an audience, it's important to understand who you're playing for, who is your target audience, just like in any type of business venture.

In addition to that, once we start preparing, if we're deciding if there are any new pieces there, then we break up on our own and we have to make sure we spend our due diligence on our individual instruments before coming together to do group rehearsals. Because of the fact there's so much layering in what we do as a group.

It's not enough just to be like, okay, we're lining up our notes. You know, we already know this piece. We're always trying to figure out is there something we can tweak about the sound? A lot of experimentation just to say, okay, is this a really great sound that we would be happy to share with the audience?

And sometimes we just totally screw around, fooling around in our rehearsals just for fun. And it makes its way on stage and that makes it more enjoyable for everyone, including ourselves. So when you're touring and you're doing. A certain number of performances throughout the year stuff can get stale.

So we are always trying to figure out is there any little changes we can make to keep things as fresh as possible? I think the other essential thing that we do as a group that has really carried us through all these years is actually flow rehearsals. A lot of times groups will put the, the actual playing part together, but we also understand that the experience is, is just as important.

So we spend a large amount of time. On speaking for each other to one another, to our imaginary audience. Before we even walk on stage, we work on transitions. What'd you call that? You called it flow rehearsal. We call it a flow rehearsal. How does everything feel? Mm-hmm. Not just with the playing, but with the, the entire thing.

As a holistic kind of sense, we wanna make sure that from start to finish, that everything feels natural, organic. Also not dead ever, always, always. Including the audience whenever possible. Always feeling like it's, uh, moving together in a way that's fun for us and them. The flow rehearsal is, I'm glad you brought that up, Alex.

I think that is something that we've noticed sometimes even has helped us stand out at showcases. Who's gonna speak where? So we finished this song. John stands up and does this. John walks like that kind of stuff. And when we do it, you know, we don't do it mechanical.

But it's, it's the part of school that we didn't learn. You know, we, we didn't learn blocking and acting and how to speak to an audience, and so that was the least natural part. The only thing I would add to what Alex said is the process also begins with us arranging and writing our own music. Whereas a lot of groups have maybe a writer or an arranger, we do a lot of originals, or even the way we do covers, as you'll hear in the middle of the show, you know, they're a little bit different.

So we, we never just play just straight at tune. It's always some sort of infinitus flip up of that tune and all three of us do it. So that is the reason why it takes a. To record because also our show is entirely from memory. Even when we do classical music, we did the Beethoven Trio cycle. Now they're always all from memory.

So that is, you know, for me, I don't know about you guys, but I find for me the memory of the new stuff is probably the most stressful part of the preparation process. So, yeah, so I would just add those to what Alex was saying. We always joke to the audiences 'cause they said, wow, you guys, your communication is so amazing.

You're always looking at each other and we're like, you can't see our mouths moving. Where are we? Tell me where we get to rehearsal be. Oh yeah. Oh, we forget to stand up. You know, I forget that he comes next. And so we end and we're all smiling, looking at each other. And then Anthony. Oh yes. I was just getting ready to tell you that the next song we're gonna play is, and then we're laughing and it's a natural moment, but that's very awkward and we just lean into it.

So speaking of that, who on your team is responsible for what? High level overview. Okay. So as a basic, general thing is that John usually handles probably the majority of our pr. Alex would probably be secondary on the pr. I'm a bit of a 50 50 loose candidate, so it's probably best they put me last and less absolutely necessary.

I'm in charge of branding and also kind of starting to look at merch. I sometimes will also handle some of the logistical stuff, and then Alex is like the administrator heavy hitter. He will pretty much cover anything and everything that wasn't just mentioned, plus all the finances. We thank you for your sacrifice, Alex.

Yeah. Alex helped me as the hardest job. No, we all split things evenly and that was one of the things from a business standpoint, we had to figure out when we first started working together, it was okay, if we are gonna be doing this wearing different hats, do we all need to learn each other's roles as a group?

And in the first year or two, we actually did, we all kind of did everybody's role, just so we could get an idea of what it entailed. After about three, four years, we were getting comfortable to the point and also busier to the point where we were saying, you know what? Can so and so just be the primary on this?

And then we just trust each other in these sort of motions. We still meet together with team meetings and just double check on certain things to make sure that everything's in order and that sort of thing is important. Also, I forgot to mention John also does the website management. Oh yeah. Super important.

So he also, thank you. He also wants to handle all that stuff, so thank you, John. Oh, social media? No, you'd be a blast one. Alex does the, when we go to eat, he's the one we give the receipts to. Anthony will get the lobster on the steak thing, you know, medium rare, whatever. Oh, I'll take the most expensive.

I'll be like, uh, I'll take the second most expensive because I'm getting dessert. And then Alex is the one looking at the budget. I always do deal of the day. Yeah, I, with water and extra crackers,

he keeps us afloat. One thing I do wanna really quick mention to anybody who's listening to this is just remember if you are definitely a group who's been going for a while or you're just starting, the important thing is, although it is important to know sort of the ropes of how everything runs, everybody is gifted with very unique gifts, and sometimes it'll work against you.

You try to force everybody to do the same thing. So just remember, identify what your gifts are and then run with those gifts. Your group will run a lot smoother. Trust me. Finance is not mine. Thank you, Alex. Alright. Boom. It's not, it's not mine either. It's the, it's the short straw I drew.

That's, thank you very much.

So the, so the thing that I've noticed like about y'all shows has really been that one, this process of you really breaking down what's called in performance the fourth wall. So one can. Anthony, you define the fourth wall, and John, I'd love to hear from you as far as what the steps you take to break that fourth wall.

Okay, so with the fourth wall, the way that we view it, especially in North American culture, you got the performers up on a stage and then of course you got the everybody else quote unquote below. And they kind of leave it as this sort of like this untouchable thing. And it's kind of like, no, we wanna approach it more from the fact of we're, we're all sharing in the experience together.

The sooner people realize this, that they're able to move forward. Because one of the most cliche sayings you'll ever hear is what music is the universal language? Right? And something, for example, that I always talk to my students about is I don't let them go on that. When I say, tell me why is it a universal language?

And it forces them to think. And finally we comes to the conclusion that music is a universal language. 'cause it's a language of emotions. So if you are not connecting on the emotional level. An individual because it doesn't matter what language they speak. At the end of the day, you may not be able to speak their phonetic language, but if you can meet them, because all of us are human, you can meet them with that emotional language.

You've just broke that fourth wall. You just breached it, and now we're all together. What Alex was talking about before having this organic thing is there, instead of just going, we memorized a bunch of stuff, you're gonna listen to it and like it. If not too bad, you better get a refund because we already collected it and attached that thing.

So John, what steps are y'all taking to break that fourth wall? Probably the most important one is getting to know the context where we're performing, studying it, and we have a heart. One of the sayings we have as a group is that music is about more than applause. So we don't play for accolades, we don't play for awards, we don't play for those things.

We really play for the audience that's in front of us. So we played, even before we were infinitus, we were playing at nursing homes, and I think even at one point. There was a series that Alex and Anthony had set up and they allowed the, the residents of that home to name the group. What did they name it up being?

Like string ambrosia or something. It was a very elderly, there, there was a lot of funny names. Ambrosia Salad was definitely unexpected pleasures. There was a whole bunch of weird things. It, it got into really weird territory there, a little adult. Some of the names like wow. Was definitely, uh, favorite

X. So, and you can see it, there is zero fourth wall in this interview. So you're literally witnessing it first, first hand. We no. So that's, that's probably the biggest thing. And then, so there's that blues quote about, you know, the blues is not about people knowing who you are. It's about you knowing the people.

And we feel that way with whether we're playing for kids, for nursing home, wherever we are. It's people. And people feel, and they come to have a good time and they come to. And so they almost expect, because of our classical instruments, they expect for us to be very formal. So when we start talking to them, first of all, they're hearing our voice.

They're getting to know us and the music that's around us, and then we're playing some things that they can kind of recognize, or even in some parts of the show, allowing them to submit requests. We pull 'em out of a basket and play it. And so that really, it does two things. It, it does. Make for a dialogue instead of just a one way conversation, you know?

So you feel like the concert is a bit of a, a dialogue, but also we are always new, even though we've been around for a long time because we're so busy doing the shows and touring. Almost every audience that hears us is hearing us for the first time, and no one else in the world does what we do. Acoustic, beatboxing, string, trio, that's not just playing covers like what we play is at a very high technical level.

So we always have the responsibility in the show to introduce the audience to what we do, to give them an expectation so they can learn how to react and enjoy it and get the most out of the show without having to wait for the second show. Hopefully that explains it. No, it does. I was just gonna say, I think one of the things that I always liked in the introduction is that John is always just, uh, letting the audience know.

It's really more like hanging out together. And I think that kind of sums it up when you're meeting with people, when you're interacting, like Anthony was saying about the emotions and all this stuff. As soon as you make that connection, it's really that we're all just kind of hanging out together. Yes, we are the people who are kind of leading everyone on this kind of journey.

But I think that's part of the thing. It's not a concert, is it's an experience, right? So that's what we're aiming to create when we go on stage. Thank you so much y'all. So the episode's not over, but we're gonna take a little brief intermission 'cause we're talking so much about this amazing group Infinitus, but let's hear them play.

This tune you're about to hear is Bumblebee arranged by John Adom, Littlejohn, not Adam, and, and we'll be back in just a few moments.

Yes. So we love, love, love the Sound of Infinitus, and that was an amazing rendition of Bumblebee. Again, arranged by John aam, little John, which is a cool name. You got two first. You got two first names there. Okay, so, so the first half of the show, you know, we talked about the fourth wall. We talked about a little bit of the background of Infinitus.

Let's talk a little bit about touring best practices. Y'all have been. So many places done so many shows. What have you found works and does not work when you're touring? Can be anything that you've just come across. You know, I'd have to say if you, you guys mind if I jump in on this one? No, go for it.

Yeah, please. First of all, you know, overpacking and under packing, both have their dangers. Overpacking because inevitably, let's say I overpack, you better believe that John and Alex are gonna have to help carry that under pack. I'm gonna, we're gonna have to stop a lot and be like, guys, find Walmart or the equivalent of Walmart and wherever we are touring as fast as we can because I don't have enough to make it through this week.

That's one of those ones that, believe it or not, you start to figure out what are the essentials very quickly. Then, you know, okay, those are the things I gotta go. And then oftentimes we do look out after each other as well. It also really helps for anybody who's toing to remember. For example, I'll, let's bring some extra vitamin C for everybody to take in case, make sure that our immune systems are strong.

You know, because you're traveling, you never know what you're being exposed to. This sort of thing comes in really handy. Now Anthony actually has a buffer. Since we're identical twins, we're pretty much exactly the same in body type in everything. So I tend to think Anthony sometimes under packs and then many, many times through touring, Anthony's like, oh shoot, I don't have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I'm like, oh, I have this sigh. 'cause I quote Overpack so that I can prepare just in case Anthony under packs so I can give him a, an extra spare something or other spare pair of pants, spare shirt, shirts, pair, whatever. But it works. It works. It can go both ways. Anthony's helped me out too. Obviously I'm giving Anthony a hard time on here.

So yes, I. Anthony's gonna try to do Egypt in a backpack. You know, he try to flip flops, the backpack, and they get there and be like, it's cold. And be like, we told you to wear shoes. I'm definitely like packing because I'm always in school doing, you know, I'm in seminary at the same time, so I'm usually having a bunch of books and everything.

And my, my suitcase is super heavy. I'll probably have the most stuff, I'll probably the, the over packer. Alex is our dealer. He's always the one that brings the, you know, the vitamin C, the melatonin. So we're always lining up like, you know, with jet lag at his door at night, Alex, you know, give us the melatonin, the low, low price of, yes, he's, it's a good thing.

You may be the finance guy because. Yeah, exactly. This first one's free, but it's no coffee every day. Yes. The packing is, is always a big thing. You know, it's in anything with our touring, all of us make sure we study the itinerary. 'cause any business, or say military individually, we have to know the lay of the land before they head out there.

Mm-hmm. We have to know who we're playing for, you know, the target audience. We have to know where we're going. We have to know kind of a little bit more of the cultural background too. So. Being in the group where we are, it forces us in a good way. Yeah. To really learn as much about the kind of microcosm of society that we're about to walk into.

As John was mentioning, you know, we do allow in many of our shows, audiences to make song requests, and so it's our job as well to kind of. Learn a little bit about the area we're going to, because if we're going to an area where everybody there only listens to country, we have to kind of step up our game and say, okay, well what were the local radio stations playing in that area?

If we don't have a lot of background in country, or does this part of the world listen to the same things that maybe people in Vancouver would listen to or that sort of thing. And we find it's, it's really helps us to best prepare mentally so that we can come in culturally aware of what's going on in the the general public's eye.

The other thing I actually, now that I think about it, if you guys are okay, I'm just gonna go back to that whole packing thing. In addition to packing, whether you pack light or, or heavy, depending on the tour, we always, I think, have to have a mental backup plan just because when you travel, things get lost and I.

We've had, we've had instances where, where we've been without luggage, we've been in an instance where I've been without my cello multiple times and, and it can be a real problem, but we just have to roll with it and figure out what to do, you know? Without your cello? Yeah, well usually that involves, that involves me being very stressed out, you know, pulling out whatever hair I have on my head and just saying, when is the cello gonna be on there?

Have you found it? Can it be on the next flight, please? And how about now? You know, that sort of thing. So that is a tough one. 'cause sometimes we land and the airport is like three hours from where we're playing. And so you know, when you don't have that, you're waiting and you're trying to figure out all those.

Those little logistics. I'll add one more thing to best practices is knowing when you're not forgetting that you're there to perform. So sometimes the tourism part. Can get in the way and you do wanna take in, especially we've played in so many cool places that we just wanna take in the local culture.

But staying out all night, eating new foods that your body might not like before performance, not getting good temperature. Just all so many different things. Instruments, you know, Northern British Columbia could be extremely dry. There was a, there was a concert where my violin, like a part that snapped off right before the show because the weather was so different and we had to.

Find new instruments. So that's something I would definitely say is, is something that we've learned the hard way is just not to forget that we are there to play a concert, that we're not there to be tourists, and sometimes having to sort of forego until after the performance, some of the local adventurous spots and eateries and stuff like that.

Do you all have any funny anecdotes or stories from your touring? Yes. Yes, we do. It's a, it's, I'm glad you asked, and I'm like, which ones can we tell publicly? I know, but the thing is, what would be safe to tell on, on this podcast for me, just sometimes it's just the really small things that that crack me up because we play for such a wide variety of ages.

Again, young to old, you just get so many funny things that happen because of the generation spanning. One another in the shows, but I always a lot of times go back to our education shows with the kids 'cause they just say funny things. We have things built in, into our education shows so that there is questions and answers in addition to song requests.

And I remember right when we were starting out, I think it was within the first year or so, guys, correct me if I'm wrong, we were all excited to answer these kids' questions 'cause they have the hands up. Me, me, me, me, me. It's like, okay. Oh, how about you? Right there in the front. Why? I think John called on this kid and these kids stood up and he, he looked like he was about to cry and he was like.

Why are you guys spitting on us? And it took us a moment to realize he was talking about the beatboxing. So we were like, oh, oh, we, we didn't realize we were spitting on you. Sorry.

I think one of the ones that I think of is it was a crazy like group of performances we played at an abbey. In Oregon or was it in Oregon? Oh yeah. Yes, it was in Oregon. Yeah, it was in Oregon and it was, it was very cool like, but we were like at an old Abbey like monks and they had this summer concert series that we did, and I also moved the day before we played at the Abbey.

I think we, I was like moving the day before and we had a wedding on Vancouver Island, like it was all squished together and we rented this car from this. We tried to support a local business and it was, they gave us a lemon and it broke down. We made it there. And so. The monk, one of the monks drove us like 10 hours or something, like it was far like back to Vancouver.

And then we, we got back, we ran off, did the wedding, and for the wedding I forgot to pack my clothes. And so I'm wearing this just to wear suits for this wedding. I have this like yellow T-shirt, bright yellow turned inside out so it can look plain. I think, was that the wedding, Anthony, where you also ruined the surprise for Yeah.

Yes, I did. Completely ruined the surprise, the exact same wedding. I didn't realize that the song that we had prepared was a surprise song that the bride had asked us to play for the groom. And of course I walk right up to the groom. Hey, just wanna go through the rundown with, does this look right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And about when we play this song, what song? This one right here. What I mean, that song that would possibly work there. I'm like, oh God, there's no way to do this. We're so screwed. We were freaking out for the content. We were triumph the music. So we're praying in the back, we're all praying, comes in is like I heard, praying everybody.

I'm. You would've heard the prayer being like, Lord Jesus, we dunno. These guys please help us pull Wisconsin together. Wisconsin's full. They already bought our CDs, so it was just between the bunks, you know, we loved Lord of the Rings, so his name was Father Odo, so his name was Frodo and him driving us back and just the whole thing, it was just like such a crazy three days.

We don't do weddings anymore. I, I, maybe that's why,

I mean, there, there's so many good stories. If I got one, I'll make really quick. We're at a nursing home one time and we're like, because once again we, it doesn't matter what you can see this one coming. It doesn't matter who we're playing for, if it's one person or if it's a thousand people, we're gonna give our best.

That's all that matters. At the end of the day, we want everyone to have a good time. Well, apparently one person decided they were not having a good time. So we've been in nursing homes where literally a person is literally heckling and they're like, Hey, practicing. And they're like shouting these horrendous things.

And at one point we decide to play this beautiful, you know, slow tune, like, and we start playing this lady in the back of her walker goes. I can't take anymore and grabs her. She's in the back row, grabs a walker and goes funk. By the time she gotta the front, we ended the concert.

The poor lady had to suffer through the rest of our playing. We have nothing against the geriatric population whatsoever. It just was so funny because she, that was so funny. She was so slow and yet so vocal in her dislike for what we were playing. That was, um, I thought you were gonna say about the lady who every time we talk she says Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't matter what you say. So if you say, we're gonna play this beautiful piece by Mo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah. It's movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keeps it real. Right? You.

Yeah. Yeah. I miss her. I miss the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lady Heckling is sometimes a part of the shows, so you just get used to it. Oh, there was one time that we were performing in Suho in China, and for that one they said, can you make sure that you know everything is to a T for the program? Because we have a lot of important phish who really wanna see what you're doing and all that.

So we start playing. We're feeling really good, and the crowd's really liking what we're doing. And we forgot that there was one thing on the program that we were supposed to perform. We didn't. So we were just like, oh, it'll be fine. We'll just call on anyone in the audience for the question and the answer period.

We called on this very cute little girl near the back and we just figured she would ask us, you know, how long have you been playing together? Or, you know, sometimes kids would ask, how old are you? You know, something that you felt was cute. First thing she did is super busy. Like, why'd you guys miss that piece?

And we're like, what? What? Like, why'd you skip that piece? It was like, oh, it's 'cause we forgot. So we had to, we had to laugh that one out, which again, that's part of the banter and so that helps because we can kind of laugh at our own mistakes because we just literally just forgot to play one piece. It was very funny.

Not outta character because it's not gonna be out of pocket in that context. Like you talking to each other, having more banter. I get it. Kids will do that to you. They'll put you on the spot always. And the part of that that made that scary was that the Chinese government has to okay, your program. And we tried to omit that piece from the program and they said, no.

They actually had to ask like the Chinese government, can they take that piece out? And they said, no, we want you to play what you said you were gonna play. And then we forgot to play it.

Piece was like, why didn't you play that piece? And I like, wow, y'all really want, yeah, you don't even know the piece. We made it up. I composed that. Last week. Oh my gosh. Well this has been so much fun. I feel like I'm part of the group now, so yes. Yay. Yay. Welcome. Thank you so much. Is there anything you wanted to add?

Where can the audience find you? Where can they follow you? What are you working on now? What's the latest? So if you put together the words infinitus and music, you can find us anywhere. That is our website, that is all of our social media. And follow us, like we're all over the place. We, we take string instruments into any place.

We are always us, and it's always real. Check out our music, you know, if you, if you like it, share it with somebody. And we are definitely, we have lots of new things cooking, you know, the, the, the pandemic has sort of, you know, put a hamper on some of those things. But I. Uh, you will be hearing some new music and possibly see some, some videos from us soon.

And, and we, we are deep into education, so we're actually busy planning a summer camp that we run called the Drive City String Bootcamp, and that's a, it's a tuition free camp for string players. So we're in the middle of planning how to do that online and, and very excited about how we'll be able to roll that out for summer.

So if you like what we're doing when you see us and you want to come study with us. This camp, uh, we have different levels, classes, but from beginners all the way through pre-professionals. So that's all. You can keep in touch with us. Thank you. Anyone else wanna add to that? No, thank you for having us on the show.

Cinnamon. Great. Yeah, thank you. Cin. Yes, thank you so much. This is so much fun. Thank you. Yes. Well, music executives, that's Infinitus and they are just as exciting to listen to as they are to watch. So if you haven't checked out their YouTube channel yet, they didn't mention it, but if you haven't checked it out yet, go check it out and follow them anywhere you can find music executives.

I'll catch you on the next episode.

Don't forget to leave a rating of the show. Helps to make us better. Thanks so much y'all. Take care.