There is a version of the music business that exists mostly in movies.

You start a band. Write a few songs. Play some shows. Somebody important walks into a club, hears you, and suddenly you’re on a tour bus wondering where to put the platinum records.

Then there’s the version most musicians actually know.

You work a job.

You raise a family.

You rehearse after work. You buy gear when you can afford it. You load into clubs, play the show, load everything back out, go home, sleep for a few hours and return to real life the next morning.

Somewhere in between, you try to make something meaningful.

Asayda frontman and guitarist Mark Frye knows that version.

He’s been playing music around Cincinnati for years, through different bands, different lineups and different stages of life. These days, he has a career in IT, a wife, two young kids and all the responsibilities that come with them.

Yet when I asked whether he still had aspirations beyond the local scene, there wasn’t much hesitation.

“The dream doesn’t ever die,” he said. “It can’t ever die.”

That probably tells you more about Asayda than a genre label ever could.

A Cincinnati Education

Mark grew up in Cincinnati, which means his musical education includes a collection of venues that have helped define the city’s rock scene.

Bogart’s occupies a particularly important spot.

He remembers being 16 years old in 1997 and heading there to see Deftones. One of the opening bands was a group most people in the room apparently knew very little about.

Limp Bizkit.

This was before “Faith” and before the band became impossible to avoid.

Mark remembers the lights going down and Limp Bizkit launching into “Pollution.” The floor erupted.

He was standing roughly halfway back in a sold-out room and looked behind him.

Everybody was moving.

“I thought the floor was gonna collapse,” he recalled.

For Mark, that night was bigger than discovering a band before it became famous.

“I think that’s actually probably the moment that I fell in love with heavy music.”

That’s the thing about local venues.

We tend to measure their importance by the artists who eventually become famous enough to have played there.

But that’s only half the story.

Their real value is what happens to the people in the audience.

Some kid walks into a room, sees a band and leaves wanting to make music.

Years later, he’s the one onstage.

The Rooms That Build a Scene

Since moving to the Cincinnati area, I’ve been working my way through many of the venues Mark grew up attending.

That made our conversation partly an interview and partly my personal orientation to Cincinnati rock and roll.

Bogart’s.

Annie’s.

Ludlow Garage.

Taft Theatre.

Southgate House Revival.

Riverbend.

Each has a different personality.

Mark describes Cincinnati as a “big, small town,” and its music scene seems to operate the same way. There isn’t one neighborhood or genre that completely defines it. Music stretches from downtown into Clifton, across the river into Covington and Newport, and into clubs and breweries scattered throughout the region.

For rock and metal, though, those smaller rooms matter.

Mark remembers seeing Godsmack at Annie’s when they were still relatively unknown, opening for Down. He saw Royal Blood in a tiny room beneath the Taft Theatre with perhaps 60 people in attendance.

Then there’s one of my new favorite pieces of Cincinnati music history: Sudsy Malone’s.

Mark played there with an earlier band, One Finger Grip.

It was a laundromat.

With a bar.

And live music.

People could literally sit on washers and dryers watching the band while doing laundry.

Coming from Boston, I thought my Ohio laundromat experience was strange enough. Years ago, while attending the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, I encountered one advertising laundry, milk, guns and ammo.

Apparently Ohio has been trying to revolutionize the laundromat industry for decades.

Mark’s version just had a better soundtrack.

Finding the Right Dysfunctional Family

Asayda wasn’t Mark’s first band.

He started playing guitar at 15 and later joined One Finger Grip, initially as a guitarist with no intention of becoming the singer.

Then the band needed vocals.

Mark figured he could sing a little.

One song became another, and eventually he found his voice.

After One Finger Grip ended, he and bassist Brian Smith moved into acoustic music with Two-Bit Acoustic. Mark continued searching for another heavier project, answering six or seven Craigslist ads and auditioning for different bands.

The problem wasn’t necessarily musicianship.

There were plenty of talented players.

He simply didn’t connect with the people.

That’s something musicians sometimes learn later than they should.

Being great at your instrument isn’t enough.

In Nashville, I’ve heard the phrase for years: you have to be a good hang.

There are too many people who can play.

If two musicians can both handle the gig, I’m hiring the person I can stand being around for the next twelve hours.

Mark sees bands as “dysfunctional families.”

He’s right.

You need to be able to tell someone his idea doesn’t work.

Someone needs to be able to tell you that your vocal sounds terrible.

Then everybody has to remain friends long enough to order dinner.

The important word isn’t dysfunctional.

It’s family.

When Mark answered the Craigslist ad that eventually led him to Asayda, he found that connection.

The lineup has changed over the years, as lineups do. Mark and guitarist/backing vocalist Brian Trester have remained the constants. Brian Smith eventually joined on bass, bringing a friendship with Mark that stretched back more than a decade. Drummer Shawn later completed the current lineup.

Life has dictated some of those changes.

Children.

Careers.

Responsibilities.

Mark doesn’t resent that.

Family comes first.

The trick is finding the people whose lives, personalities and ambitions can fit together long enough to keep creating.

He believes Asayda has found that group.

Write Something You Want to Hear

That stability is arriving at an important time.

Asayda is working on a new album, and Mark believes the band may be in its strongest creative position yet.

The reason isn’t that they’ve discovered some formula guaranteed to produce a hit.

It’s almost the opposite.

They’re increasingly comfortable ignoring the formula.

“We’re gonna write stuff that we like,” Mark said. “We hope everybody loves it. I mean, that’s fantastic that everybody loves it. But more than anything, we have to love it.”

That philosophy is pushing the new material in different directions.

Mark doesn’t want to write eight versions of the same song.

We’ve all seen that concert.

The first three songs hit you like a truck.

By song eight, you start wondering whether the band has been playing one 45-minute song with unusually long pauses.

Asayda wants variety.

Heavy music can still be melodic.

Aggressive music can still leave room for dynamics.

A record can move without losing its identity.

Mark pointed to Australia’s 12 Foot Ninja as an extreme example of a band willing to jump between heavy music, acoustic passages, jazz, Latin influences and seemingly whatever else interested them.

Asayda may not take those changes quite that far.

But Mark likes the philosophy.

Keep people guessing.

Becoming the Alchemist

The new album is also allowing Mark to indulge another side of his personality.

He’s producing much of it himself.

His formal audio-production education?

Curiosity.

Mark works in IT, and when something technological interests him, his instinct is apparently to disappear down the rabbit hole until he understands it.

He began seriously teaching himself recording while working with Two-Bit Acoustic, eventually mixing, mastering and producing an entire album.

His first software of choice wasn’t exactly designed for rock bands.

FL Studio.

Primarily known at the time as beat-making software.

He made it work.

Since then, he’s used Pro Tools, Studio One and other tools, gradually building what he jokingly calls a “pseudo studio” at home.

For this Asayda record, that setup is becoming part of the creative process.

Mark compared producing to being an alchemist surrounded by beakers.

Add some of this.

A little of that.

And occasionally discover that the entire experiment was a terrible idea.

That’s part of the appeal.

Brian Trester might bring in the framework of a song. Mark works with it. Shawn and Brian Smith add their ideas. The band records something and collectively decides they’ve nailed it.

Then everybody listens away from the studio.

Nope.

Back downstairs.

When Unlimited Options Become the Problem

There is, however, a danger in recording yourself.

There is no clock.

I’ve spent enough of my life in studios to know that a ticking clock isn’t always the enemy.

A traditional studio forces decisions.

You arrive prepared because you’re paying for the room, the engineer and everyone involved.

Mark remembers recording an earlier EP at Refraze Recording Studios in Dayton. He walked in to cut vocals and found himself standing in front of an impressive microphone.

Then the producer helpfully told him that the singer from Goo Goo Dolls had used it the previous week.

No pressure.

At home, nobody is standing behind the glass watching the budget.

That’s liberating.

It’s also dangerous.

You can always redo the guitar.

Add another vocal.

Change the drums.

Try one more part.

Remix everything.

Finish the mix.

Then decide it needs one tiny addition that requires changing half the mix.

Eventually somebody has to say the record is done.

Asayda is still early enough in the process that experimentation is welcome.

But Mark knows the band will eventually have to stop being alchemists and start being finishers.

A Crazy Time to Be a Musician

Technology is also changing what Asayda can put on the record—and eventually reproduce onstage.

For the album, Shawn is recording with an electronic drum kit rather than a traditionally miked acoustic kit.

That decision opens another world of possibilities.

Electronic sounds.

Samples.

An 808-style hit.

A specific sound created for a particular moment.

Those options can then become part of the live performance without turning the show into musicians playing along to prerecorded backing tracks.

Mark knows some musicians still resist modelers, electronic drums and similar technology.

His response is practical.

He’s still playing.

Shawn is still playing.

The instrument is being performed.

The technology simply gives them access to sounds that would otherwise require a warehouse full of equipment.

Mark remembers when his rig involved a Peavey half-stack and a rack-mounted EQ.

Today, if he wants a particular sound, chances are somebody has figured out how to put it in a box.

“It’s a crazy time to be a musician,” he said.

The challenge now isn’t access.

It’s restraint.

Just because you can use a completely different guitar tone, drum kit and production style on every song doesn’t mean you should.

Asayda wants experimentation while maintaining enough sonic consistency for the project to feel like an album.

The Album Still Matters

That word, album, is intentional.

Like many independent artists, Asayda has spent recent years releasing singles.

Mark understands why.

A single creates another opportunity to get people’s attention.

Release one song.

Six weeks later, give them another.

Two months later, remind them again.

Drop an entire album at once and, within a few months, you’re promoting something the internet has already decided is old.

Still, the band wants to make an album.

The likely compromise is a staggered release: singles arriving over time while the unreleased tracks remain part of the larger project waiting behind them.

Mark doesn’t expect the complete record in 2026.

Early 2027 is more realistic.

Part of that timeline comes from the reality behind the music. Mark dealt with medical issues that slowed the band’s progress, and Asayda has also been balancing recording with live performances.

The goal after their upcoming shows is simple.

Put their heads down.

Finish the work.

Then get back in front of people.

Make the Cover Yours

When Asayda returns with the new material, not everything audiences hear will necessarily be original.

Mark likes the idea of including a few surprises.

One example already exists in the band’s live show: Billy Idol’s “White Wedding.”

The important part is that Asayda doesn’t simply play “White Wedding.”

They play their “White Wedding.”

That’s an important distinction.

There is nothing wrong with performing a song faithfully, and tribute bands have built entire careers around doing exactly that.

But Mark prefers taking something familiar and filtering it through Asayda.

The audience already knows the words.

Now give them a reason to hear the song differently.

And yes, Mark is still waiting for Billy Idol to join them onstage.

Billy, apparently you’ve been called out.

Sixty People or Ten Thousand

Near the end of our conversation, Mark finally delivered the Royal Blood story he’d promised earlier.

Years ago, a friend brought him to the small ballroom beneath the Taft Theatre.

There might have been 60 people there.

Royal Blood walked onstage.

Two guys.

Bass and drums.

Mark initially wondered whether half the band had failed to show up.

Then they played.

They destroyed the room.

Mark had never seen anything quite like it.

Later, he saw Royal Blood again at a festival.

This time there were thousands of people in front of them.

The audience had changed.

The band hadn’t.

Same energy.

Same commitment.

Same determination to play the show like it mattered.

That’s what stayed with Mark.

And maybe that’s the clearest picture of what he wants for Asayda.

Not necessarily fame for fame’s sake.

Not some fantasy about abandoning every responsibility and pretending everyone is still 22.

He wants the music to reach people.

He wants the band to grow beyond Cincinnati.

He wants more people standing in front of the stage.

But whether it’s 60 or 10,000, the responsibility is the same.

Play like it matters.

The People Who Make the Dream Possible

When I asked Mark to name an unsung hero, he didn’t choose another musician.

He chose the families.

His wife.

His children.

The families behind the other members of Asayda.

Because every rehearsal has a cost.

Every show means time away.

Every recording session occupies hours that could have gone somewhere else.

For musicians with families and careers, pursuing music isn’t an individual decision.

Everyone around them participates in some way.

Mark also extended that gratitude to the independent venues that continue putting local bands onstage.

Those places could often make their lives easier.

Hire a DJ.

Run a college night.

Pack the room.

Instead, many keep taking chances on musicians.

They give local bands somewhere to fail.

Somewhere to improve.

Somewhere to become good.

And occasionally, somewhere to become great.

Mark knows what those rooms mean because he grew up in them.

He was the 16-year-old kid standing inside Bogart’s while an unknown Limp Bizkit shook the floor.

He watched an unknown Godsmack walk onto the stage at Annie’s.

He stood with roughly 60 people watching two unknown guys called Royal Blood tear apart a tiny room.

Now he’s on the other side of the barricade.

Maybe there’s another 16-year-old standing somewhere in the crowd watching Asayda.

Maybe that kid goes home and picks up a guitar.

That’s the cycle.

Careers change.

Families grow.

Priorities shift.

The music business changes almost daily.

The dream changes with it.

But for the people who truly love doing this, Mark is right.

It doesn’t die.

It just gets smarter.

And maybe a little louder.

There is something misleading about the phrase debut single.

It sounds like a beginning.

For Ivey Leighton, “Good Girl” is anything but.

It’s the first song the public gets to hear, but behind those three or four minutes are roughly ten years of writing, learning guitar, filling a phone with lyrical fragments, figuring out who she wants to be as an artist, and quietly waiting for the moment when the music in her head finally sounded the way she believed it should.

Now it does.

On September 1, 2026, Ivey officially released “Good Girl,” introducing herself as a pop-rock artist with one foot planted in sharp, melodic pop and the other firmly in the world of angsty alternative rock.

For the first time, when somebody asks the question nearly every developing artist hears, Can I find you on Spotify?, she doesn’t have to explain that something is coming.

She can simply say yes.

After ten years, Ivey Leighton is finally ready to be heard.

It Started at Fourteen

Like many artists, Ivey can trace her relationship with music back to childhood.

But she’s more specific about the moment when music stopped being something she loved and became something she could imagine herself doing.

She was 14.

She had finished writing her first complete song and played it for her family.

They liked it.

At the time, she thought it was pretty good too.

Today?

She doesn’t even remember what it sounded like.

That’s probably for the best.

Every songwriter deserves the right to bury a few early compositions where nobody can find them.

What mattered wasn’t the song.

It was finishing it.

For the first time, Ivey had taken an idea that existed only in her head and turned it into something other people could hear.

“Maybe I should keep writing,” she remembers thinking.

She did.

Somewhere Between Pop and Angst

The music Ivey grew up listening to helps explain where she’s landed today.

Taylor Swift was there early and remains an influence.

So was Coldplay, courtesy of her parents.

Her mother introduced her to Rilo Kiley. Radiohead found its way into the mix. As Ivey began leaning further into rock, Hayley Williams and Paramore became particularly important influences. More recently, Wet Leg has joined the list.

Put all of that together and Ivey’s description of her own music makes sense.

She wants it somewhere in the middle of classic pop, angsty alternative rock and songs that are simply devastating.

That’s a fairly wide target.

Which is exactly why it works.

Ivey isn’t interested in sanding down all of her influences until they fit neatly inside a genre box. She’s more interested in finding the place where they collide.

She wants enough familiarity for a listener to follow along, but she also likes taking what she calls a “brave step” outside the box.

Not so far that someone wonders whether the wrong song accidentally started playing.

Just far enough to make you think:

I didn’t expect that.

Then:

I like it.

That’s a good instinct for a songwriter to have.

Sad Songs Are More Fun

There is another constant in Ivey’s writing.

She doesn’t exactly specialize in sunshine.

Her earliest songs frequently centered on breakups, and even now she admits that writing happy songs doesn’t come naturally.

Why?

Because being angry is fun.

Being sad is fun.

Being dramatic is definitely fun.

At least when you’re writing songs.

There is something wonderfully freeing about songwriting that allows a person to turn a terrible emotion into three minutes they actually enjoy revisiting.

But listeners shouldn’t assume every lyric is an entry from Ivey’s diary.

The emotional root may be real.

The story often isn’t.

She likes creating characters.

She exaggerates.

She borrows a feeling and invents circumstances around it.

Sometimes she’ll take inspiration from people she knows and change enough details to protect the innocent.

Or guilty.

Depending on the song.

That approach gives Ivey permission to make the story better rather than remaining loyal to whatever literally happened.

Songwriting isn’t journalism.

Sometimes the truth of an emotion matters more than the accuracy of the plot.

The Notes App Is Part of the Instrument

Ivey’s writing process today remains relatively simple.

Usually it begins with an instrument.

Guitar.

Piano.

She searches for chords that match whatever she’s feeling in the moment.

Then she starts singing.

Sometimes actual words arrive.

Sometimes gibberish does.

And occasionally, buried somewhere inside the gibberish, a real word falls out.

That’s enough.

One accidental word can suggest a line.

The line suggests a character.

The character suggests a story.

When that doesn’t happen, there’s always the Notes app.

Like many songwriters, Ivey has accumulated a collection of one-liners waiting for homes.

Some are new.

Some have been sitting there for months.

She’ll scroll through them, pull pieces together and see whether two unrelated thoughts suddenly make sense next to each other.

Once the foundation appears, the creative work begins.

For now, she does all of it alone.

Every song she’s written has been written by herself.

She’s interested in eventually co-writing, although she admits the idea makes her nervous.

What happens if the scheduled writing session happens to land on the exact day she has absolutely nothing?

What if the other writer sits there thinking, This person sucks at writing songs?

It’s a reasonable fear.

It’s also one nearly every songwriter who has walked into a co-writing room has probably experienced.

Fortunately, songs have a habit of showing up anyway.

From Voice Memo to Studio

For all the years I spent working in studios, I still appreciate how many songs begin with the least glamorous recording system imaginable.

A phone.

That’s where Ivey starts too.

Voice memos capture the idea.

But once she believes a song is ready, her process takes a significant jump.

She goes into the studio.

For her first four recordings, that meant heading to a studio in Dunlap, Tennessee.

The process started with a basic demo, Ivey and her guitar, so everyone involved could understand the song before the full band began building around it.

And the musicians helping build these songs aren’t simply random players pulled together for a session.

They’re family and friends.

Just unusually talented family and friends.

The Family Band

Ivey credits her uncle, Spencer Lyman, with being one of the major reasons this project came together.

He plays keys on the recordings and helped assemble the musicians.

Trevor, a Chattanooga-area bassist, handles bass.

Emily, a drummer around Ivey’s age, brings the songs to life from behind the kit.

Then there’s Ivey’s father.

He plays lead guitar.

More importantly, he’s been part of her musical education since before she realized she was receiving one.

Ivey grew up watching him play guitar. As a teenager, she began picking up the instrument herself, teaching herself through tabs and chord charts until the shapes became muscle memory.

Eventually she stopped simply learning which chords worked.

She started learning how weird she could get with them.

Now father and daughter are on the same record.

There’s something fitting about that.

The person she watched play guitar as a child is now playing guitar behind songs she wrote herself.

Everybody in the Room

The basic tracks were recorded largely as a band.

Ivey was isolated in another room, singing while the musicians played together.

Her mother captured a video from one of those sessions.

In the room with the musicians, everything appears almost silent.

People are playing.

Heads are moving.

The band is locked into something the camera can’t hear.

Meanwhile, Ivey’s voice can be heard coming from the other room.

It’s an odd visual, but one anyone who has spent time around recording studios understands.

That’s the magic trick.

A room full of isolated sounds eventually becomes one performance.

Once the foundation was there, the details followed.

Punch-ins.

Additional parts.

Vocals.

Harmonies.

And Ivey came prepared.

During the long gaps created by everyone’s schedules, the four-song project took roughly a year and a half to complete, she used GarageBand on her phone to experiment with harmony parts and ad-libs.

No elaborate setup.

No expensive microphone.

Just preparation.

By the time she entered the studio to record the final vocals, she already knew what she wanted.

Sing the Song, Not the Line

Ivey also records lead vocals in a way I’ve always preferred.

She sings the song.

Beginning to end.

Then fixes what needs fixing.

There are plenty of ways to build a vocal in a studio, and modern recording technology can create a technically perfect performance one line, or even one word, at a time.

But technical perfection isn’t always the same thing as a performance.

I’ve always preferred having a vocalist sing through the entire song several times.

Let them settle into it.

Let the verses lead naturally into the chorus.

Let the emotion build where it should.

Then go back and repair the details.

Ivey approaches her vocals similarly.

The performance comes first.

The microscope comes later.

Then Bob Bullock Got Involved

Once the recordings were ready to mix, Ivey’s project took another significant step.

Bob Bullock agreed to mix the songs.

I’ve had the privilege of working with Bob myself, so I can say with some confidence that this isn’t exactly a minor addition to the credits.

He’s a nine-time Grammy-winning engineer with decades of experience and the kind of ears that can make the rest of us reconsider several life choices.

Again, Spencer helped make the connection.

Initially, Bob didn’t respond.

Then he heard “Good Girl.”

That changed things.

According to Ivey, once he heard the song, he wanted to be involved.

Not a bad early review.

Ivey and her team spent a few hours with Bob establishing the direction before he continued working on the mixes afterward.

What came back was the sound she’d been trying to reach.

Heavier.

Punchier.

Bigger.

The band suddenly carried more weight without losing the song underneath it.

Ivey still requested changes.

Tiny ones.

Milliseconds.

Things she freely admits almost nobody else would ever notice.

Welcome to making records.

Creative people can spend an astonishing amount of time fixing things the audience will never consciously hear.

The audience may never identify the difference.

But they’ll feel it.

Hearing It for the First Time

When the finished mix arrived, Ivey didn’t listen casually.

She went to her car.

No headphones.

Just the speakers and the song.

Then she played it again.

And again.

She wanted to hear it the way someone else might hear it for the first time.

That’s nearly impossible when you’ve lived with a song for as long as she had.

By that point, she knew every word.

Every breath.

Every harmony.

Every tiny millisecond she’d asked Bob to change.

Still, something was different.

For the first time, the song no longer sounded like an idea.

It sounded like a record.

“My music had actually become something for once,” she told me.

That may have been the real debut.

Meet the “Good Girl”

Of all the songs Ivey could have used to introduce herself, “Good Girl” feels appropriate.

The song began differently than it ended.

Originally, Ivey imagined a girl obsessed with how one particular person perceived her.

She’s so focused on meeting his expectations that she isn’t paying enough attention to the way he’s treating her.

Then Ivey stepped back from the idea.

It felt too passive.

Her solution was sarcasm.

Instead of allowing the character to remain trapped underneath someone else’s expectations, the chorus begins mocking them.

The song transforms.

What started as insecurity becomes confrontation.

Ivey calls it a bit of an “FU song.”

That’s when it became fun.

She first played it quietly for her father.

Then the band got hold of it.

Suddenly the song had teeth.

The arrangement became heavier, and the attitude Ivey had written into the chorus finally had a band capable of pushing back with her.

That combination, sharp pop songwriting underneath rock instrumentation, may be the clearest early indication of where Ivey Leighton is headed.

Ten Years to September 1

The unusual thing about a first release is that the audience experiences it instantly.

The artist doesn’t.

For listeners, “Good Girl” appeared on September 1.

For Ivey, it took a decade.

Ten years of writing.

Ten years of getting better.

Ten years of figuring out what she likes.

Ten years of learning what she doesn’t.

Then roughly a year and a half of coordinating musicians, recording songs, building harmonies, mixing and preparing everything surrounding the release.

Photos.

Artwork.

A website.

The pieces that turn someone who writes songs into someone building a career around them.

Ivey described the feeling as both relief and impatience.

That combination makes sense.

After waiting this long, even tomorrow probably feels unnecessarily far away.

Her First Unsung Hero

When I asked Ivey who deserved recognition for helping her reach this point, she returned to the person who had been there from the beginning.

Her dad.

He’s her guitarist.

But that’s not the role she emphasized.

He’s the person she sends a new song to after she’s listened to it so many times that she no longer knows whether it’s any good.

And he’ll tell her.

Not everything is great.

Recently she sent him two songs.

He liked one.

The other?

It was all right.

That’s valuable.

Support isn’t telling an artist everything she creates is brilliant.

Sometimes support is caring enough to tell her when it isn’t.

He’s also protective.

He understands enough about the music business to remind her not to agree to everything simply because somebody presents an opportunity.

For a young artist entering an industry filled with people eager to offer advice, deals and promises, that’s a useful person to have nearby.

Now Comes the Career

There was one piece of our conversation that couldn’t be shared during the live portion of the interview.

After the show, we finally announced it.

I am now managing Ivey Leighton.

That obviously changes my perspective on this particular story.

I’m no longer simply watching what happens next.

I’m part of it.

And I don’t take that responsibility lightly.

Ivey has spent ten years preparing to reach the starting line.

My job isn’t to rush her from it.

It’s to help build something that lasts.

The website, photography, artwork and “Good Girl” are the visible pieces right now.

Behind them, we’re already working on what comes next.

Another song.

Then another.

More opportunities.

More performances.

More people discovering the music.

This isn’t supposed to be one big moment followed by silence.

It’s a marathon.

The Big Girl Things

Ivey has a wonderfully simple way of describing this next stage.

She’s ready for the “big girl things.”

The website makes the career feel official.

Management means she has someone working beside her to pursue opportunities, make connections and help navigate decisions.

But when I asked what she’s most excited about, she didn’t say streams.

She didn’t say press.

She didn’t say social-media numbers.

She said performing.

She wants to get onstage.

She wants it to be fun.

Then she wants the stages to get bigger.

That’s the part I like.

Because careers can become complicated very quickly.

Analytics.

Algorithms.

Marketing plans.

Content calendars.

Distribution.

Branding.

Contracts.

All of those things matter.

But somewhere underneath them needs to remain the person who started doing this because she loved music.

Ivey still sounds like that person.

One Year From Now

Before we finished, I asked Ivey to give me a goal.

Not ten years from now.

One.

Where does she want to be?

Opening for a stadium artist.

Apparently we’re easing into this.

No pressure on management whatsoever.

But I like the answer.

Goals should be uncomfortable.

They should require work.

And sometimes they should sound slightly ridiculous when you first say them aloud.

Ten years ago, Ivey was 14 years old, teaching herself guitar and finishing a song her family happened to like.

Today, she’s releasing music mixed by a nine-time Grammy winner, building a professional team, launching her artist identity and preparing the next releases.

The stadium isn’t here yet.

That’s okay.

This isn’t the end of the story.

It’s barely the first chapter the rest of us are allowed to read.

For years, people asked Ivey Leighton where they could hear her music.

She kept giving them the same answer.

I’m working on it.

She doesn’t have to say that anymore.

“Good Girl” is out.

Ivey Leighton has officially arrived.

Now we get to find out where she goes next.

Three songs.

That’s it.

No second chances. No waiting until the end of the night to figure things out. No asking the artist to step back into the light and do that cool thing one more time.

For a concert photographer, three songs can be the entire show.

Tom Rentz wouldn’t have it any other way.

After nearly three decades photographing artists ranging from KISS and Journey to Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Blake Tyler, and countless others, Rentz still talks about standing in the photo pit like someone who just discovered it yesterday.

“It’s heaven,” he told me.

Three songs.

Then get out.

And somehow, after all these years, that’s still enough to make him drive hours for the opportunity.

Sometimes considerably more hours than intended.

The Shot Before the Shot

I first really started paying attention to Tom’s work after we photographed the same show.

That’s one of the interesting things about concert photography. Put several photographers in the same pit, give them the same three songs, the same artist, the same lighting and roughly the same angles, and you’ll still end up with completely different photographs.

Tom’s looked different than mine.

Not necessarily because he was standing somewhere I couldn’t stand or because he possessed some magical camera setting nobody had told me about.

They simply felt different.

One particular image of country artist Blake Tyler stuck with me. I had photographs of Blake performing onstage that I liked.

Tom had one that looked like Blake was emerging from the rubble after conquering a small country.

It was gritty.

Atmospheric.

Rock and roll.

And that led me to the obvious question.

How?

The answer turned out to have considerably less to do with Lightroom than I expected.

It starts before Tom presses the shutter.

Know Where They’re Going

Tom does his homework.

When possible, he’ll watch footage of an artist’s previous performances before arriving at the venue.

Because concerts, especially larger productions, aren’t completely random.

Musicians have positions.

They have habits.

They have moments.

Someone walks onto a riser during a particular song. Another musician comes down the catwalk. A guitarist hits the same pose. A performer jumps into the crowd.

Once you’ve photographed an artist multiple times, those tendencies become even easier to recognize.

That knowledge puts Tom in position before the moment happens.

It doesn’t mean he gets everything.

He doesn’t.

Nobody does.

Tom freely admits there have been plenty of times when something happened on the opposite side of the stage and he was left wondering how he missed it.

But preparation improves the odds.

He described watching one performance and noticing equipment being moved near a catwalk. A ladder appeared. Then a drum.

Something was clearly about to happen.

Rather than staying with the photographers gathered near the stage, Tom moved into position.

The performer eventually climbed onto the ladder and began playing the drum surrounded by fans as a spotlight cut across the scene.

Tom was waiting.

That’s concert photography.

Sometimes the best camera setting is simply being in the right place.

Burst Mode Is Your Friend

Once Tom sees the moment, he’s not shy about holding down the shutter.

He shoots bursts.

Why?

Because it’s digital.

Delete what you don’t need.

The philosophy is simple, but the reason behind it is important.

Live music is movement.

Facial expressions change instantly. A guitar swings through the frame. Hair moves. Lights change. Hands go up. Eyes close. Eyes open.

One frame might have everything.

The frame immediately before it might have a microphone blocking half the artist’s face.

Tom wants the moment.

If capturing several frames gives him a better chance of getting it, he’ll take them.

The editing can come later.

Show Me the Artist

For all the preparation and technical decisions behind Tom’s work, his photographic philosophy is surprisingly straightforward.

He wants to show you the artist.

Not his Photoshop skills.

Not an elaborate effect.

Not something so heavily manipulated that the photograph becomes more about the photographer than the person standing onstage.

The artist is already creating the art.

Tom wants to capture it.

That’s why he’s drawn toward tighter, almost portrait-like concert photographs.

Shoulders up.

Expression.

Eyes.

Details.

The personality of the performer.

Sometimes the photograph demands something wider, particularly when the stage production or lighting is spectacular. Tom regularly carries a 14–24mm lens specifically for those situations.

But when the moment is right, he wants to get close.

Visually, anyway.

Sometimes he’s actually standing a hundred feet away.

Black and White and Everything Red

Tom also has an appreciation for black-and-white photography.

Not as a rescue operation.

There’s a difference.

Concert photographers know the pain of walking into a venue and discovering the lighting designer has apparently developed a deeply committed relationship with the color red.

Just red.

Maybe a little blue if they’re feeling generous.

Black and white can certainly help deal with difficult lighting, but Tom prefers using it because the photograph actually calls for it.

A tight photograph of Thomas Dolby wearing mirrored glasses became one example.

Strip away the color and suddenly you’re concentrating on Dolby.

The glasses.

The reflection.

The personality.

That’s the point.

The editing supports the photograph.

It doesn’t become the photograph.

Three Songs Means Three Cameras

Time becomes particularly important when photographers are restricted to the traditional first-three-songs rule.

Tom doesn’t want to spend those songs changing lenses.

So he brings cameras.

Plural.

A 14–24mm.

A 24–70mm.

A 70–200mm.

Three bodies.

Three lenses.

Ready to go.

If the situation demands it, he’ll add another camera with a much longer lens.

His description was appropriate.

He looks like he’s going to war.

There’s a reason.

Every second spent changing a lens is a second when something might happen onstage.

With only three songs available, those seconds matter.

When the Pit Is at the Soundboard

Then there are the increasingly common shows where photographers aren’t allowed anywhere near the stage.

Instead, they’re sent to front of house, the area surrounding the audio and lighting engineers, often positioned well into the audience.

Now that 70–200mm isn’t enough.

For those shows, Tom brings a 180–600mm lens.

It isn’t his ideal concert lens because its maximum aperture doesn’t let in as much light as the faster lenses he would normally prefer. But modern digital cameras make it possible to compensate by pushing the ISO higher.

Tom generally prefers staying around ISO 3200 when possible.

Maybe 4000.

He admitted to 4000 eventually.

We got it out of him.

With the long lens, he’ll use a monopod for stability and, because Tom readily admits he’s “five foot nothing,” occasionally a step stool when the venue allows one.

All of this for three songs.

That’s commitment.

The First Show Was KISS

Every photographer has a first concert.

Tom’s was KISS.

No pressure.

His opportunity came after he began working with a local newspaper. Tom had built a darkroom in his basement, and his wife encouraged him to actually do something with it.

That push eventually led to the newspaper.

Then KISS came to town.

Tom asked whether they could request a photo pass and turn the coverage into a full-page spread.

They agreed.

He arrived carrying two film cameras.

Film.

Meaning there was no screen on the back of the camera telling him whether he got the shot.

No thousand frames followed by sorting through everything later.

And before the concert even began, disaster struck.

While rushing toward the loading dock after picking up his credential, Tom dropped one of his cameras.

The 24–105mm lens broke off the body.

Now his first concert photography assignment, KISS, of all bands, would have to be photographed using the 70–200mm lens remaining on his second camera.

And he got the shots.

Gene Simmons.

Paul Stanley.

Ace Frehley.

Peter Criss.

The Psycho Circus era.

Tom remembers Paul Stanley putting a guitar pick on his tongue and looking directly toward the camera.

KISS understood the relationship between performer and photographer.

They knew how to create moments.

Tom was hooked.

From KISS to Beyoncé Before Beyoncé

The late 1990s and early 2000s gave Tom another interesting photographic archive.

NSYNC.

Backstreet Boys.

98 Degrees.

Britney Spears.

Christina Aguilera.

He even photographed Destiny’s Child opening for Aguilera at Riverbend.

Think about that for a moment.

Today, getting approved to photograph Beyoncé would be a significant accomplishment for virtually any concert photographer.

Tom photographed her when Destiny’s Child was still the opening act.

He even has a Destiny’s Child souvenir dollar from the show.

Those are the little pieces of history that accumulate when you’ve been doing this long enough.

Photograph the Band

Experience has also taught Tom not to spend all three songs chasing only the singer.

Bands are bands.

The drummer matters.

The bass player matters.

The guitarist standing in the shadows matters.

And often those musicians are considerably harder to photograph.

Drummers are notorious for disappearing into darkness behind cymbals, hardware and whatever lighting the production forgot to point toward them.

Bass players might spend the entire show outside the brightest area of the stage.

Tom looks for opportunities to give them their moment too.

That becomes especially important with developing artists.

Give everyone something they’re proud to share.

Besides, sometimes the person everyone else is ignoring provides the best photograph of the night.

Don’t Cut Off the Guitar

Tom and I share another preference.

If possible, keep the instrument.

A guitar isn’t a stage prop.

For a guitarist, it’s part of the performance and often part of the visual identity.

Tom likes keeping the entire neck of the guitar in the frame when the photograph calls for it.

It can also create unexpected opportunities.

Chrome hardware catches stage lighting.

Reflections appear.

Starbursts happen.

The instrument contributes to the composition.

Of course, concert photography doesn’t always obey the rules of traditional portrait photography.

Sometimes feet get cropped.

Sometimes bodies get cropped.

Sometimes the stage is six feet high and you’re considerably shorter than the stage.

You work with what you have.

The objective isn’t blindly following a rule.

It’s preserving the drama of the moment.

Photographer First. Fan Later.

Perhaps the most important lesson Tom shared had nothing to do with shutter speed, aperture or ISO.

It’s etiquette.

You’re a photographer first.

A fan later.

That means following the restrictions you’re given.

If security tells photographers they can’t cross a certain point, don’t cross it.

If the artist’s team establishes a shooting location, respect it.

If a guitar pick lands in the pit, give it to a fan.

You’re there because someone trusted you with access.

Abuse that access often enough and eventually it disappears.

Worse, your behavior can affect everyone else carrying a camera.

Tom has stopped younger photographers from doing things he knew could jeopardize their future credentials.

Because this is a small world.

Venues remember.

Publicists remember.

Managers remember.

Other photographers definitely remember.

There is pit etiquette.

And your reputation enters the venue before you do.

Sometimes You Don’t Get the Show

Of course, getting the credential in the first place can be its own adventure.

Sometimes photographers apply and hear nothing.

Sometimes they’re approved.

Sometimes they’re approved and then suddenly they’re not.

Sometimes management pulls every credential hours before doors open.

And sometimes you get approved to photograph AC/DC and The Pretty Reckless, leave home two and a half hours early, get trapped on I-70 because of an accident, spend roughly five and a half hours in your vehicle and never make it inside the venue.

Tom experienced that one personally.

There aren’t many professions where someone can spend an entire day traveling to work, never actually get to work, receive no paycheck and immediately start looking for the next opportunity.

Concert photography is apparently one of them.

So Why Keep Doing It?

That’s the question.

Tom openly acknowledges that most freelance concert photographers aren’t making a living from these shows.

He isn’t pretending otherwise.

When people tell him he should be getting paid, he has a simple comparison.

Does his brother get paid to go fishing?

No.

This is Tom’s fishing.

His golf game.

The thing that gets him out of the house.

The thing he genuinely loves doing.

And after nearly 30 years, that might explain his photographs better than any discussion about aperture ever could.

Still Chasing It

Tom credits his wife for starting the entire thing.

She encouraged him to do something with the darkroom he built all those years ago.

She’s still encouraging him today.

Go photograph the show.

Take the opportunity.

Keep doing what you love.

Tom jokes that she occasionally suggests he should become a touring photographer because she wants him out of the house.

After 36 years of marriage, he knows enough to give her credit.

Smart man.

There are now decades of photo passes collected as reminders.

Decades of concerts.

Decades of artists.

Decades of moments lasting fractions of a second.

And Tom isn’t finished.

He told me he’ll continue doing this as long as he can.

I believe him.

Because you can hear it when he talks about walking into the pit.

After all these years, after the credential requests, the long drives, terrible lighting, broken lenses, missed shots, front-of-house restrictions and hours spent editing photographs for a three-song opportunity, he still gets excited about it.

That’s the part that matters.

You can teach someone ISO.

You can explain shutter speed.

You can buy a better lens.

You can spend years learning Lightroom.

But nobody can teach you to care about the next frame.

Tom Rentz still does.

Three songs.

Then out.

And tomorrow, if they’ll give him another pass, he’ll happily do it all over again.

Get in the pit and have some fun.