Kevin Williams:
The whole idea was what we'd always envisioned. The platform that musicians, and the whole music industry, record labels, musicians, producers, studios, everybody, amateur recorders, everybody. It's inclusive of everyone who wants to be part of it. Could connect worldwide, work with each other in an easy platform, that was affordable to work with. They gave you that real time experience, like you and I talking here, except connecting high quality, studio quality audio, and connecting all the dots together. Managing the latency and making it just super simple for everybody. That was the vision and the goal.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. But I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right, so I'm excited to be here today with Kevin Williams. So, Kevin is the Chief Community Officer for Session Wire, which is a software tool that allows artists and producers to remotely collaborate, and then be able to record high quality recordings from around the world, which is super cool. He's been featured on CBS, NBC, The Verge, and the Nam show. Worked with award-winning multi-platinum production teams. Whose worked with artists, all the way from Madonna to David Bowie, to Travis Scott and Shawn Mendes.

Michael Walker:
So, today, I thought it would be fun to, just, dive into Session Wire as a tool, and specifically ... I mean, especially when there's a global pandemic, or something that really makes it difficult to collaborate with people, in person. And even just in general with the internet nowadays it's, in a lot of ways, it's just so much ... It's a big opportunity to be able to remotely collaborate.

Michael Walker:
So, excited to talk a little bit about Session Wire and how you, as an artist, can use it to be able to level up your recordings.

Kevin Williams:
Glad to be here, Michael. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Thanks for being here, taking time to be able to share some of this.

Kevin Williams:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
So to start out with, I would love to just hear a little bit about your story, and how you got started with Session Wire, and how long you guys have been a business for?

Kevin Williams:
Robin and I were both two of the founders. There's also a founder, Rick Beaton, but the three of us more or less incorporated in 2015. And the idea for Session Wire is Robin, my partner's, vision. I love to speak to it, but it's his vision for a platform that he felt was missing a long time ago. I mean, literally, 20 years ago, we need something like this for the music industry, for people to collaborate on.

Kevin Williams:
And so it was a long time coming, to bring it to fruition, for sure, with Robin, but that's kind of the original idea of where it came from. My story goes quite a ways back. So, I'm not sure how much we want to cover of it? But, I've been a musician, a touring musician. I've had my own production company, my own publishing company, for many years, back in the eighties. I've done just about everything you can imagine, every hat, managing nightclubs, you name it.

Kevin Williams:
In the early nineties, I started teaching music production, and developing curriculum. Did that for most of my career, really, up until Session Wire has kind of taken over with that. But I was one of the founders at Nimbus School of Recording and Media, along with Bob Ezrin and Garth Richardson. And prior to that, my own program, in my own studio, for a good eight years, almost 10 years, that was accredited with the provincial government. So there's a lot of history of teaching and mentoring music production, and audio engineering, and artist development, songwriting, everything that kind of goes with it. So there's a lot of hats that I've worn, over my career, for sure.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome, man. And definitely, it sounds like you said, this is something that you guys felt was a big need for, not just in the past couple years, but especially in the last couple of years, at the time of recording this, going through the global pandemic, but also just in general, it's an idea that its time has come, and we've been ready for it.

Michael Walker:
So I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that, specifically, and what's the biggest need, or problem, that you feel Session Wire is serving?

Kevin Williams:
Okay, good. There's some confusion when the pandemic hit, because a lot of people said, "Wow, what a great idea!" And the truth was, we were doing this, and had the vision for this, long before the pandemic. The pandemic organically drove a lot of user base up, and people interested in it. But if you back up, a little bit from that, the vision really was, we saw the music industry, over the last 10, 15 or more, years, just really having nothing to replace, economically, the ability to fly people around, put them up in hotels. There just wasn't any money left, where record labels used to have budgets to fly people in, put you up, go to a studio. That all kind of has been crashing and burning for some time. And we're looking at the idea of, well ...

Kevin Williams:
And I should also say part of the problem with that was, is that the being in a room together, and being able to create something that was special and magic, because you're all together. And that vibe, that thing that happens when you're working together, that all kind of got lost too. So between the economics not supporting the ability to fly people around, put them up in hotels, everybody kind has gotten used to this, throwing things over the fence, kind of offline. "I'll send you a stem," you play on it, you send it back. And that's kind of become the norm, sadly, before the pandemic.

Kevin Williams:
So when we started actually putting together our MVP, back 2016, and working through this, the whole idea was, what we'd always envisioned. A platform that musicians, and the whole music industry, record labels, musicians, producers, studios, everybody ... amateur recorders, everybody. It's inclusive of everyone that wants to be part of it. Could connect worldwide, work with each other in an easy platform that was affordable to work with.

Kevin Williams:
It gave you that real time experience, like you and I talking, here, except connecting high quality studio, quality audio, and connecting all the dots together, managing the latency, making it just super simple for everybody. That was the vision and the goal. So, that's what we were doing. And then the pandemic hits and all of a sudden, it's like, wow, this is exactly what we've been looking for, because Zoom doesn't have that component, and it's a different thing. Zoom is a different thing. Yes, we have the video channel, the talk back channel, like you and I are using on the interview here, but the idea of connecting all the workstations together, managing the latency, recording with people, or not, just monitoring what people are working on. But at least talking to them in real time, as if you were in a studio with them, we always felt this was the next best thing.

Kevin Williams:
So people were looking for us, when the pandemic hit, organically, because they were just trying to find something. So it wasn't about the pandemic, the pandemic just exaggerated the need for something like Session Wire. And we kind of here, we are now into the pandemic, coming up two years, which is crazy. And the irony I find with this by the way, is that a lot of people who were looking for something like Session Wire are now going, "Well, the pandemic's going to go away and it'll all be good again, and we'll be back in studios." And that's just not the way it's going to go. All the people that we're working with, and there's some amazing people that use Session Wire, but I'll use Dave Kalmusky as an example, he had a great seat year in his studio, with studio, with clients, with everything. Because, he was already involved with collaborative remote technology, even before Session Wire.

Kevin Williams:
And he's adopted Session Wire because of that. But, he's made his business, and his collaborative remote business, based on the idea that I don't want to have to worry about what happens if COVID happens again. So, I believe people who are really looking to the future, are going to plan their workflows around something that doesn't matter what happens with COVID anyway. Don't expect it to get better and then, whatever, just plan to work this way. And I know that wisdom, a lot of people are going forward are going, "Yeah." And if you have that wonderful opportunity working studios with people, yeah you use it. But it's kind of a hybrid, use it when you can, but don't worry about what happens if COVID gets worse, or there's another COVID kind of thing, you just keep working. So, all of those things are kind of, to me, what we've learned, at least from the process of the pandemic, it's been a crazy time for sure.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's probably a conversation that's happening all across the world right now is, in a lot of ways, some of these tools have existed for longer than the last couple of years. They've existed for five, 10 years. And, the people who are really savvy, who've been rising at the top, or the people who are really good at using these tools. It just wasn't until pandemonium hit that it required us. There was no choice anymore. It's like you had to either evolve or die, basically.

Kevin Williams:
It's true. It's not just for the music industry. It's for all industries where you can work collaboratively, remotely with somebody or just work. If you are a salesperson, why can't you do this remotely in your home? You'd probably do a better job. Obviously, my wife's a nurse, she can't work remotely, some jobs, you just can't do that. But for anyone who can, in any type of job, or walk of life, it's just, that's the way you want to be planning your future, so it doesn't matter to you what happens.

Michael Walker:
Right.

Kevin Williams:
But, certainly the music industry is long overdue for this type of technology, to be able to do the same things you do. Next best thing to being in a recording studio, use Session Wire. If it does feel after a while, by the way, being on a Session Wire session with everybody, you forget about the app, just like you and I are talking, having a conversation, except the workflow is including studio quality, audio going back and forth, and recording, or just monitoring, or whatever it is that you're using the app for.

Kevin Williams:
But you get that next best sensation, of working with somebody, and the vibe, and all the process that goes with it. All that magic that can happen, because good ideas happen, like you and I talking together, not like sending an email back and forth, or a text message, or something. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah. There's definitely something beautiful about the energy that happens when you're live. When you're with people, and you're talking about, you can actually brainstorm and have these different ideas together. And I think you're right, that's one of the things that's missing in the landscape where if you're just doing remote work, and you don't have that live connection. You're not able to, kind of bounce experiments, and have these discoveries that happen together. It sounds, in a nutshell, for everyone that's listening this right now, the service basically allows you to have the experience of being in a recording studio setup, and being able to collaborate with producers, but just from around the world. You could have people from around the world and me be able, to be in sync, and to actually record together those songs, even though you weren't in person, at the studio, which is super cool. So let's talk a little bit about how, let's say that someone is listening to this right now, and they want to learn more about Session Wire, kind of get it set up, for their own use case. Where would you recommend they even get started?

Kevin Williams:
Well, if you go to the website, www.Sessionwire.com, there's a kind of a call to action there says, trying out for free, whatever the message is there. And if you click on that, you have a choice of going and setting up a free creator account, which is, it's just free, there's no cost to it. Or you can set up an artist account, it's up to you. You can upgrade at any time, if you start a free account. Benefits of the free account, there's lots of amazing things about the free account. It's, for lack of a faster way to explain it, it's kind of like zoom, for musicians. It's more designed to be the same thing as zoom like we're using, but it's designed for musicians.

Kevin Williams:
It's got file transfer in it, Like the file drop system that we have in, we call it a head drop, by the way, it's like Dropbox built in, that's part of the free plan. There's a whole ... you can collect friends, and have contacts that are saved and it's free, honestly free. So there's a lot of advantage to that account. It doesn't come with the high quality, studio quality, audio feature. And there's other plans coming by the way, there's a pro plan that's coming that has even more features. But, what's very cool about it is that if you are somebody, let's say you're a mixing engineer, and you have clients. If you have clients, they don't have to have a paid account. They can have the creator account. And the creator account is such that when you connect with say the mixing engineer, the mixing engineer has the paid account and has the high quality audio stream.

Kevin Williams:
All the features that the paid account has, are grandfathered onto the free creator plan, for your clients, let's say. So, they don't have to pay for the feature during the call. So for a mix engineer, which is a great use case, there's so many use cases by the way, dozens, but a mix engineer connecting with clients would be such, you and I are on a call, you're my client. Instead of sending notes back and forth, and me sending three mixes, hopefully one of them you like, and then you going, "Ah, it's really good, but can you tweak this, tweak that?", and going back and forth, which is crazy. You and I are on a call and you're hearing like you're sitting in my control room. You're hearing exactly what I'm hearing, with the same studio quality. And we talk about it, in real time.

Kevin Williams:
You're free, you're just listening. And you don't, by the way, have to have a workstation, a [inaudible 00:13:26], your recording software open. It can go right to your computer directly. You can have headphones on like you are, or speakers plugged into your computer. You don't have to have recording software. And all I'm going to do, as your mix engineer, is play you all the things as if you're sitting with me here, and we talk about it, and when we're done the session's done, there's no going back and forth. So, ideas even about the mixing process. I know for mixing engineers, very frustrating. If you send somebody something and they're "Ah, it's so good, but can you just tweak this, and tweak that?" And then you go back and go, "Okay, it's more work." And so I tweak those things. I send it to my client and the client goes, "Ah, you know what, it was fine the way it was."

Kevin Williams:
And so, all that extra work was a waste of time anyway. Why wouldn't you have just done that with your clients in real time, signed off on it, you're done. It's more fun by the way. And it's just more efficient all around. So all the mixed engineers I've set up are going, "How can I not do this anymore?" So for the free account, that's a really great benefit. Doesn't mean you have to have clients that have to pay for an account, they can do that. And from my experience, somebody who has a free account, as soon as they start using it with people, and they see the high quality audio stream, and all the other features, they go, "This is amazing." It's not like it's super expensive or anything.

Kevin Williams:
So, it's like you can have that experience with people. You can, by the way, I should say, there's a discovery tab, where you can find people. So, it has a built in sort of ability to find artists, producers, people that are in the ecosystem, that you might want to work with. In some sense, kind of like the Facebook aspect, type in some filters, I wanted guitar player, plays in this style, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, look at all these people, and then reach out and connect with them. Would you be interested in working with me? So there's all that piece in there as well. A lot of things that are very cool, which for our interview can take a while to explain, but those are some of the highlights for sure.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast. I can tell you about a free, special offer that we're doing right now, exclusively for our podcast listeners. So, if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians, and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best way to market your music, and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. So, right now we're offering a free two week trial to our music mentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show, notes below, you're going to get access to our entire music network content vault, for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and the last, but not the least, the business.

Michael Walker:
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And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of music mentor, and maybe the most valuable, is that you're going to have this community where you can network with the other artists, and link up, collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So, if you're curious, and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing contents, connect with the community, and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift, for listening to our podcast, as we're in the show. So don't miss out. Go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
That's super cool. I love the idea of being able to actually have the system, where you can actually filter, and you can find out ... I want to find people to work with, and I'm going to actually reach out to them through there. Super cool. So, it sounds, really the key players would probably be the people who currently have either a studio, or have production experience, like producers or mixing engineers, to be able to bring in their clients to be able to do this remote work with their clients is one of the most valuable use cases, right?

Kevin Williams:
Yeah. And yet at the same time, in our vision, Robin's vision especially, for the future, really this is not just designed for studios and professional people. It's designed for amateurs, and hobbyists, and everything. If you think about all the time people spend on Facebook, just connecting with people, fine, it's fun, but honestly it's a bit useless. But, what if you're doing the same type of activity, but with musical people, that you were creating friends with, and relationships with, and building those relationships. So, Hey, I'm just kind of a hobbyist, kind of used to play in a band maybe, and I've reached out to guys I used to play with, and we connect, and it's not like we're trying to get a record deal or anything. It's just, it's fun for us to connect and work on music together.

Kevin Williams:
And in that capacity, if you kind of use that as a model, that's a very cool model for a lot of people. There could be somebody who says, "I'm a songwriter, and I'm trying to find people I can work with maybe another, maybe I'm a songwriter, but I'm a lyricist, but I'm looking for someone who can be the other half of that. And so I'm reaching out and looking for people to work with." There could be that element, or you're auditioning people. Really Michael, at the end of the day, there's so many dozens use cases of what Session Wire could be used for. I kind of alluded to, mix engineers use it with their clients and there's no recording there. They're just using it to monitor things, so nobody's recording anything. But I just did a really great overdub with Paul Pesco last night, him playing a guitar solo on an album, I'm producing on one of his songs.

Kevin Williams:
And so, overdubs, or a slam dunk, obvious of how you could do that. But an overdub could be a professional producer in a studio with an A-lister, a performer of some sort, but just as much, it could be someone who I'm just starting out, and I'm looking to ... I'm writing some music, maybe my band is writing some music. We're just reaching out to find other players to help us, or a producer. And maybe the producer isn't a name producer. It could just be someone who's starting their career out as a producer. And I need clients to work with. So, we're not trying to turn, we never have been in the business to try to turn Session Wire into this. It's just for professionals. It certainly is a professional tool without a doubt, but it's meant for everybody.

Michael Walker:
Cool. That totally makes sense. So, one thing that you had mentioned was, and I think it's a great way to, really quickly and easily kind of understand a tool that people are familiar with saying it's sort of like Zoom, but for musicians. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about, so if it's like Zoom for musicians, specifically, what are the key distinguishing factors that, Zoom doesn't include, but Session Wire is, really a part of the main use case.

Kevin Williams:
Well Zoom, the example with Zoom is simply, it's not like Session Wire in, except for the talk back channel and the video channels that you and I are sharing here. After that, the comparison kind of goes away. But if you say, all right, and you think of all the workstations that are out there, all the digital audio works stations, Pro Tools, Logic, QBase, Ableton, Studio one, GarageBand, Reaper, there's just so many, right? Any one of those workstations can connect with any other workstation. Could be Pro Tools to Pro Tools, could be Ableton to QBase, Studio one to whatever. That part doesn't matter. So, that in itself is very cool if you think about it. So, when you set yourself up and the setup, by the way, is super easy. We had a Version one, which worked great, it was amazing.

Kevin Williams:
Had a whole bunch of features, some of which we're bringing back. But it needed an aggregate device to set it up, which essentially you had to go in, take your audio interface, and add a stereo, send and return, chat pair of channels that were Session Wire channels. It wasn't that hard, but it was hard enough, for most people, that was difficult for them. The version that we have out right now, Version two, is using plugins to do the communication portion. So, I guess the easiest way to say, take the talk back channel, the video channels that we understand with Zoom, add to that, the ability, that when you download and install Session Wire from the website, creator plan, artist plan, producer plan, whatever it is, it downloads and installs the software in such a way that whatever workstation you're on, it's supported.

Kevin Williams:
So there's nothing you have to think about or do with that. So when you launch Session Wire, you launch Pro Tools, launch them in that order, Pro Tools, Session Wire or whatever the workstation is. There's nothing else to do, except for, inside any of the workstations where your inserts are, compressors, limiters, plugins. You go into that area where the plugins are, and you just put as one direction of the audio, you put the send plugin on the main output of your workstation. So, whether it's Logic, QBase, Studio one, doesn't matter, just put the main output into Session Wire, send plugin, that's it. So, if you and I were doing this right now, we'd be done. If Liberty takes as fast as you go to the inserts, put the plug in there and I'd say, "All right, Michael, send me some audio, hit play", anything that's in the main output of that workstation is coming to me, there's nothing else to do.

Kevin Williams:
So, it's so beyond simple at this point, that's been our goal by the way, is to make it that simple. Now the other way around is if I want to send to audio, I do the same thing to you. Now, if we've set it up, so it automatically goes to interface, and just receives your audio. So it's nothing really you have to do. But if you said, "I need to record that audio", it's couple of extra steps. You can put the receive plugin on an ox, stereo ox channel, or audio channel, and away you go, there's the audio coming in from the other side and I'm recording it. And again, it depends on the work, the workflow you're using.

Kevin Williams:
If you're doing a mix review, nobody's recording anything. If you're doing an overdub, to be honest, you're sending a file transfer through our system, which is built in, and dragging that into your session, playing your overdub, streaming that to the other person. They're listening, producing it in real time. When you're done, you send what you've created as a wave file back to that person. They drag it in their session and there's your overdub, but you've done it together.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that, the comparison to Zoom, the part that is similar to Zoom, is that the way that we're here right now, talking to each other live, we can see, we can hear each other. That part is, you can see, you can hear each other. You can have this type of communication with people, with a team of, you could have your five band mates in the same, "quote-unquote", Zoom room, and we can all see, and hear each other.

Michael Walker:
The thing that's different is that each band mate could have their own instrument synced up to the same DAW on the ... let's say, you're working with a producer in the session, and so literally the keyboardist, is the producer, could say, "All right, time to record the keyboards, here we go." And they could click record. And the keyboardist from home could play the keyboard part. The producer would get it and say, "Okay, cool, we got the keyboards laid down. Now it's time to move on to the vocalist." And so now the vocalist, whose still in the same session, is able to record the vocals on that part. So, just like being in an actual studio, but you can do it remotely with a full band setup.

Kevin Williams:
Yeah, and I'll just clarify that for everybody listening here, the session that you are on with, like you and I, as a peer to peer session, that portion of the session, you are recording with the workstations on either side. We have a feature called session view, which is a link. It's a web-based link, that you send to somebody, email, slack message, Facebook messenger, whatever, when they click on it, it just says join session. And when they join the session, just like Zoom, as you said, the people joining the session, come across the top of the session. Those people very, by the way, that's the session view, feature there is super simple. Just all you do is click a link and you join the session, there's no download, and install the software, or anything.

Kevin Williams:
Those people joining the session in your analogy would be hearing the same high quality audio they would have. They have their talk back channel, they have their video channel. They're not part of the recording session in the peer to peer call that you and I are on. However, that is a feature that's coming sooner. We can swap people in and out of that. So more or less how you described it, is how it will be just not exactly right now.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So you can even have observers, where you have a link. That's not necessarily like they're not meant to perform, or they're just going to be ... it's kind of like they're sitting on the couch in the studio and they're just, "We're just going to hang out and we're going to watch this unfold." And they might kind of chime in and be like, "Oh, that was a cool thing, you should do that." But they're not necessarily holding the guitar. Cool.

Kevin Williams:
Exactly. And initially we called the feature, the fly on the wall feature. That was the way we kind of understood it. So you've hit the nail on the head, and in a very simple way, it could be that I'm the engineer and recording you, you're the remote talent that I'm recording, and the third person is the producer. The producer doesn't have to be part, and have access to the recording portion of it. Just needs to be there to coach and instruct, and give input and feedback. So, that'd be a very easy version of three people on the call. One is recording the call, one is the talent, one is the producer on the session view portion of the call. If it was audio post, for instance, there might be four or five people on the call for different reasons, as far as doing the dialogue replacement and such. If it's an ... and we do a lot of stuff, universities are adopting Session Wire in a big way.

Kevin Williams:
So that's a huge thing, especially with the pandemic to have students being remote, because they can't be in a classroom together. But having the instructional people, the professors, the audio instructors, be able to work with people and hear their high quality audio stream. So, all of these things we've been thinking about, feature sets and such going into the next while, how do we address basically music production, audio engineering, and music production in one category, let's say university's education in another category, and audio post, and composers. It's kind of three separate areas, that for the most part use the same types of features, some specialty features for each one of those. But for the most part, it is the same, the same technology, just slightly adjusting for different things.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it's just, I'm sure that I'm not the only one I'm sure, because this is a big idea, and a big need. And for a long time I've been like, "Man, it would be so cool if we could just collaborate on a song together from around on the world, remotely." And for us to be able to do that in a way that actually works, and I know that this isn't, we don't have to go down too much of a rabbit hole here, but I know that there's issues when it comes to playing in real time, right? So if we're going to be on Zoom, we were going to perform a song together. There's a little bit of latency and, it might not even really be a way ever to get around that.

Michael Walker:
But, what this tool does is really to be able to have that studio experience where, if you're recording one person at a time, which, the majority of studio recordings that I've done, were actually that way anyways, it was like one person at a time. So, I think this is awesome, I'm sold. So I know that you told me before that you actually did something, you had a special gift or, something for people who are listening to this right now, to be able to sign up for a free account. Could you talk a little bit more about, for anyone who's listening right now, who is like, "Okay, cool, I want to give this a shot. I want to try this out." Either myself, or with a producer. Could you tell us a little more about that?

Kevin Williams:
Sure. It essentially, what we have is some day passes, and what we have found out is, when you try, we're all kind of burned out by a trial period of something. There's so many things like, just try it out.

Michael Walker:
Right.

Kevin Williams:
And part of the problem with that, is that the trial period is, timed in such a way that you have to start it in an advance. So I know for me, if that happens to me, I go, "I really did want to try that, but I forgot about it, now the trial period's over, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." So what we have is passes. You can buy these passes, on our website, so you don't have to be on a monthly subscription, or pay for a yearly subscription. You can just buy a day pass and it's super affordable.

Kevin Williams:
And it gives you all the features for that period of time that you're using it for that day. And when you do that, without any real commitment there at all, you can go, we know that once you try it, you're going to go, this is amazing. And then you have the opportunity to say, oh, I'm going to have a monthly plan, or I'm going to pay for yearly, save a bit of money, et cetera. So a huge part of having these passes is the idea that, that resistance to having to commit to an app that your not even sure you're going to use. And we all go through this, we all know we go through this.

Kevin Williams:
So, that's where we came up with the idea of the passes. So what I have is three day passes, there are actually three, three day passes. And with the code, which I'll give you here for your users, for your membership, people watching this, that if you click on that and you create a free account and you put that into the code, the redeem code box, then you'll have time to try it out for three different sessions that will allow you to say, "Hey, this was great."

Kevin Williams:
Can try it again at another time when I got maybe somebody to try it with, and I give them the same kind of opportunity, and then we can connect together. And there's no trial period that ends or anything, which makes it a lot less stressful because then you don't have to go, "I forgot to use it, or whatever it is." Right? So that's what I have to offer for your membership. And people watching is that if you create a free creator account and you take the code that I'm giving you here, it's MM2021. So music, magazine, 2021, MM2021. And if you redeem that code, then you'll be able to have access when you want. You don't have to start and redeem it right away, you can. And then once you start it, then I try it out, cool. And wait, maybe another day or a week or whatever, try out the next one. So, that's my gift that I have for you guys to try today, if you'd like.

Michael Walker:
That is awesome. Thank you, man. I really appreciate you creating that for everyone that's listening right now. So like always-

Kevin Williams:
It's our pleasure. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So like always we'll throw the link in the description of the podcast, so you can go check it out, get your free, three day passes, that's a really cool idea too. Just giving people, rather than having a free trial, actually making it based on their actual use case, which is like, "Okay, I want to actually have a session, and have a day pass for that." So it's super cool.

Kevin Williams:
MM2021. I going to say and add to that, one of the things that we have found in early adoption with people is, it's kind of being on Facebook, and you don't have no friends. If you don't have somebody to connect with, the whole experience is lost. So, if you say to somebody, let's say, there's people watching right now, "Hey, this is great, why don't you and I do this together, so that we can connect together?" That's kind of the missing piece. You go, this is really cool, but it's like, I have no friends to call and work with. Right. So, it sounds ridiculous, but actually, there's an awful lot of truth to that. So if you could say, all right, people watching, why don't you get a few people together? You can try it together. I think that would give you a lot more understanding of the use of, and the fun of using it, basically. So, I just wanted to add that to that as well, Michael. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. No, that's super helpful. Yeah. I was just imagining, if you were discovering a Zoom, for example, and it's all right, I'm going to hop on zoom, but it's just, you sitting there...

Kevin Williams:
By yourself, sitting there going, "Gee, it's not much fun."

Michael Walker:
I don't really, yeah. This is kind of boring. Cool. So, that's definitely a great tip. So, anyone who's listening to us right now, reach out to a couple of your friends, either music friends, buddies, band mates, that you want to try this out with, or your producer. I think that initially it would be super smart to find a producer that works with your band, that you've worked with in the past, and actually use this to record a song together. Really, really awesome. So, it's MM2021 that gets you that, the three day passes and, thanks again, man. I really appreciate you hopping on here, and sharing a little bit about what inspired Session Wire. And I think it's a super cool tool. It's time has come for sure.

Michael Walker:
The time has been here for the last, like you said, the last five to 20 years, but especially right now, I think that it's a big opportunity for people to stay connected, and be able to keep creating music, to capture that magic. Like you said, to be in the room, actually to have that, that's what the musical creative process is all about. Really being able to bounce off of each other and having this creative energy. So, thanks for doing what you do, and for coming on the podcast today.

Kevin Williams:
Yeah. It's my pleasure. I'll add one more thing. If you want to have a look at Session Wire being used for an overdub, if you go to my Facebook page, Kevin Williams, I just posted this morning, the overdub that I did with Paul Pesco last night. Paul Pesco was the music director for Live at Daryl's house, played with Madonna. Most of his career, he's an amazing player, just amazing guy. So, if you wanted to see what it looks like, working on an overdub, you should go there. And, also I mentioned that my music mentor group is another website you can check out. Because actually that's how we first connected was, you'd have somebody from your group, reach out to me through music mentor groups. So, there's some cool stuff, with music mentor group as well with Session Wire, but absolutely my pleasure, Michael, to join in and talk about all these things. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Yep. That's awesome. And I should probably clarify, we both use music mentor specifically. We both have a different department.

Kevin Williams:
Yes.

Michael Walker:
We have our, I don't know if there's maybe some people listening this to music mentor, but same idea. I think that there's the reason that we're talking right now. The reason, there is a space, there's so much goodness that comes from collaborating and from mentorship. And so, we'll definitely, throw a link to the Facebook page, and a link to all the resources that you talked about in the description for the show notes and, Hey man, you're awesome. Appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Kevin Williams:
I really enjoyed speaking with you, Michael. It's great. Look forward to the next time. All right. Thank you.

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at its episode. Make sure to check out the show notes, to learn more about their guests today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media tag us after that really helps. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music career to the next level. It's time to be a modern musicians now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.