14.07.2021
This week’s guest feature is by none other than Bryan Jones, with his new solo project Wave Point. He’s been in the industry for 20+ years, most recently as 1/2 of the duo Golf Clap. Now, Bryan has hit the ground running with his solo endeavor, providing smooth, groovy tunes all within the house music realm.
His debut album “Higher Dimension” comes out August 13th on his label Even Smoother, and this Friday July 16th his next single “Blurry Lines” is available on all platforms.
In his interview, we dive into the details of his new project, his single and album, his use of Fiverr in his album, how he keeps organized, pros and cons of solo vs. duo projects, the Wave Point Community Facebook group, why he loves house music, upcoming gigs, merch, social media in music, and more.
I hope you enjoy his mix and features this week – I’m excited for the Pumpkin Bread recipe on Friday!
Each mix will exclusively premiere on Deep Space Radio at noon on Wednesday – and then be available on the detroit.dance SoundCloud as per usual at 3:13pm EST.
Be sure to check out his mix, on SoundCloud now.
detroit.dance: How did you choose the name “Wave Point”?
Wave Point: Honestly, I wrote down a bunch of different words and connected them or crossed them out until I had about 10 or 20 options, and then asked a few people for some feedback.
detroit.dance: How did you come up with your logo? I love how it’s super simple and clean.
Wave Point: I used a website called 99 Designs. You put a bid out for what you want, and a couple hundred people send you their version of your logo. You narrow them down to five or six of them, and then those selected designers go through a second round of revisions. Then you pick the logo you want and the winning designer gets paid. I knew I wanted something that I could put on literally anything, and maybe two or three years down the road it would be easily recognizable as me. Like the Nike swoosh. It’s a long-term process to be recognized that quickly but I’m starting at the beginning, and hopefully it’ll work. I tried to reverse engineer it for merch purposes as well, I won’t have a hard time with a more complex design like some people do.
detroit.dance: What is your vision for Wave Point?
Wave Point: By the end of the year. I’d like to be playing most weekends again. It’s already kind of getting there now, but I’d like it to be less of Detroit all the time, and more all over the place. Right now I’ve got my first shows in San Francisco, San Diego, Cincinnati, Albuquerque, and a few other places. I just did St Louis. Most things have been in the Midwest. Detroit and Chicago are the two places where the most people know me and I’ve lived in them both before, so that makes sense. I’m trying to get into new cities one by one, maybe play some smaller shows at first and then come back to the same cities for bigger and bigger shows as time goes on.
detroit.dance: You’ve played around in all different sub-genres of house music – what is it about house music that you like so much? What draws you to it?
Wave Point: All of the sub-genres of house are very different to me. Stuff that is on Confession or Night Bass is way different than Moon Boots, which is way different than stuff that John Summit or Lee Foss play. Over the years, I really liked disco house at first. I thought deep house and tech house were boring. It took me a while to slowly learn each of the sub-genres and figure out what I like in them, who makes the good stuff in there, and curate it. Now I play quite a wide range of stuff, it’s always house for the most part. I may throw a couple techno songs in there but usually everything I play falls under the house music umbrella. The other weekend I played a day party at Belle Isle, played funky and disco, and then went to Tangent Gallery after and was on before Codes and played tech house and harder stuff. Not one song was the same. It’s pretty much adaptable to any situation. I could play house music anywhere with music and play the right thing for the right time, unless it’s a commercial bar I guess. That’s one side of house that I don’t really do, the pop remixes and stuff like that. A lot of people do but that’s not my thing.
detroit.dance: What has been your favorite gig so far as Wave Point?
Wave Point: Micro Movement in Detroit.
detroit.dance: How do you feel about the public’s reception of Wave Point so far?
Wave Point: The reception has been really good so far. It’s been a little less than a year, so I feel like it’s gonna take a couple more years before everybody knows what it is. Even if I’m constantly in the press and constantly putting out music, it’ll take a while. I don’t have tons of followers on my social media but I’m getting really good engagement in comparison to the amount of people I’m following, so that’s a good sign.
detroit.dance: Do you have anything coming up that you would like to mention?
Wave Point: My album “Higher Dimension” will be out on my label Even Smoother on August 13th. This Friday the 16th I have a single called “Blurry Lines” coming out. I’m supporting Dom Dolla at The Magic Stick in Detroit on July 29th. And I’ll be putting together a little tour post for August soon. I’ll also be at Spring Awakening : Autumn Equinox in October.
detroit.dance: In previous interviews, you’ve talked about how you used components for tracks on your album off of people you found on Fiverr, are there any of those samples in “Blurry Lines”?
Wave Point: This one happens to be the one that doesn’t. But throughout the album, I got violin string sections, a brass horn section from a group of brothers in Russia, a few different guitar players, a funky bass guitar player, a keyboard player, and the vocals for “In The Moment” all from people on Fiverr.
detroit.dance: The artwork and animated video clips for your singles and album are pretty cool, did you find those on a similar website to 99 Designs?
Wave Point: No, actually. The designer James Walter is from Milwaukee, and he messaged me randomly out of my Facebook group (Wave Point Community) asking for advice about starting his own label. I helped him out with a few things and noticed the artwork he had, and we got to talking about his full time job as a graphic designer. So since he was already interested in my project I figured it would be a good fit. His Instagram is here.
detroit.dance: If you used one word to describe “Higher Dimension”, what would it be?
Wave Point: Summer.
detroit.dance: Your singles and this upcoming album are all being released on your new label “Even Smoother”, talk about your plans for this label.
Wave Point: Yeah, right now I don’t have the resources to launch both a new project and a full-on label, so it is essentially a placeholder for me to release my new music for now. But eventually it’ll become one and maybe I’ll launch a second label, too.
detroit.dance: It seems like you’re constantly putting out new releases and keeping busy with shows, interviews, etc. How do you keep everything organized?
Wave Point: Lately my publicist has been a huge help. She’s amazing. She knows literally everybody so it’s been a bit easier to get my stuff out there. But overall, right now my main priority is knowing I need my name, logo, and picture on as many things as possible so people put 2 and 2 together. Having my picture on things is important because if it just says “Wave Point”, people that know me but don’t know that I’m working on this new project won’t make the association.
detroit.dance: Do you prefer being busy constantly? What do you do when you’re not working on music?
Wave Point: This is all I do, so if I’m not busy I feel like I’m doing nothing. Most of my life has revolved around music. A lot of times I’m looking up marketing and branding things and finding music for sets. I occasionally play basketball or rollerblade, things like that but it’s not really something I do all the time.
detroit.dance: Are there any venues that you’d like to play at that you haven’t yet?
Wave Point: Any festival bookings in general. There are a few places I really liked that I played at as ½ of Golf Clap that I’d like to go back to as Wave Point… It’ll Do in Dallas or DayTrip in LA.
detroit.dance: In general, what is a positive and negative aspect of working in a solo project versus a duo project?
Wave Point: Solo Positive – I get to decide on all the creative aspects. For example, if it’s a duo and there’s pictures of both of us, and I don’t really like how I look in one but they like how they look in one, or we debate on what songs to be playing in our set, or what kind of specific social media posts to make… I like being in control of that stuff for sure.
Solo Negative – I’m an introvert so it’s a lot of work now to go out of my way to be really talkative with everybody in all these cities and be the point of contact. That part’s definitely a little harder. I don’t get on the mic very much, and I have to remind myself to go out and take pictures with people. There’s certain things that I got out of the habit of doing, and I’m slowly getting back into the habit of doing them again.
detroit.dance: You had a hoodie drop previously, are you planning on releasing any more merch in the near future?
Wave Point: I’m going to be doing shirts soon. Doing the hoodie at first wasn’t the best idea, because by the time they were designed and printed it started to warm up outside. I also got the most high quality ones I could get from a local shop, with color on both sides, so it was pretty expensive. My thoughts on it were that I wanted to put out something that people would constantly wear to help get the word about Wave Point out. I’ll do hoodies again later though when it gets colder.
detroit.dance: You run a Facebook group called Wave Point Community and are always active on social media, why do you think it is so important for an artist to be engaged with their community?
Wave Point: I think that getting people to want you to succeed is the number one thing, and music is only one of the parts of it. If I made really good music, and you didn’t know my name or where I’m from, or how I am personally…you also don’t have any friends that know me, you’re way less likely to care. You might like a song on Spotify or SoundCloud and that’s it. If I can be engaged in people’s lives and try to help out other people that are doing music related things, and give advice, they’re more likely to be into it. Look at the people that buy band shirts that don’t know anything about the band but the shirt is cool…nowadays it’s about how the brand makes you feel, too. So I’m trying to cover all my bases.
detroit.dance: What are some examples of things that you post in the group?
Wave Point: Each weekend I’ll put an outlet for people to post their new music or post what shows they have. I use Inflyte to send promos out, so I have a post where I tell people to put their best track in the post, I pick the best ones and send them out to my promo list. So just different ways to get other people more exposure. I usually post something anytime I see something that would be relevant to me, that would help me as a producer, a musician or as a fan… I’ll post a link there, even if it has nothing to do with me. I’m always trying to find more things to add value to the group.
detroit.dance: What are your thoughts on the role of social media in today’s music industry?
Wave Point: Everybody has a short attention span these days. When I put up these mixes, I want people to listen to them, and some people are, but it’s more about people constantly seeing that I’m doing stuff for multiple different sites. It’s about showing up in the endless scrolling again and again to stay in someone’s head. The perception of seeming in demand. Or let’s say someone’s playing a really big show and you see it on their Instagram story, they could have just walked up there and played one song, gotten that video and left. Or they could have been up there for eight hours and were the only reason everybody came, we don’t know what’s true just from the one video. Social media is something that never stops.
detroit.dance: Being in the music industry for as long as you have (20+ years), what is something that you learned or adapted to pretty quickly and something that took you a little bit longer to learn or adapt to?
Wave Point: A long time ago when I started out, I was quickly able to make good music and get onto good labels, but it took a long time to figure out how to be somebody that people want to book, and how to be more relevant. When I was in my first group, High Caliber, we were putting out so many records and never getting booked and people didn’t understand why. I didn’t fully understand it either at the time, but it’s more about the relationships you build, and getting people to want you to succeed.
detroit.dance: For any brand new DJ that has just picked up this new hobby within quarantine, do you have any words of advice for them?
Wave Point: Making good music or mixing really well isn’t enough. People need to know your name AND your face. Everybody thinks that you can just live anywhere now and be a successful musician because of the internet, but think about all the people you didn’t talk to over quarantine even though you had the internet. Go to local shows, talk to promoters so that they make the connection and they’re more likely to book you. Play any gig that you can get for a while, and then later you can start getting pickier if you want to. Build a good foundation first. If you’re brand new, getting out there as much as you can is essential. You learn how to play on different equipment than you have at your house, and that can be a totally different experience. When your face is out there and promoters talk to you and notice you being booked by other promoters they know, you’re more likely to be booked again.
detroit.dance: What are you looking forward to for the rest of 2021?
Wave Point: Mainly getting back into shows in different cities every weekend, to where next year I’m part of the regular touring circuit. I’m looking forward to when things are a bit more automatic, right now it’s a lot at first to get myself back out there.
Make sure you check out Wave Point’s Destination Detroit – Monroe Street Midway and his Recipe by Request that will be posted on Friday (Pumpkin Bread).
Keep up with Wave Point on his socials: