Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. How you doing today, Ray? I'm doing very well. I'm actually, I'm putting a contract out on somebody.

Really? Yeah, I've been thinking about it, been thinking about it. Should you be advertising this? Well, I don't know. I was thinking about going to visit, you know, since we're going to go visit The Outfit today, I thought maybe I could talk to them about putting a contract out on someone.

Oh, I see. I thought you were going to go with, you have a new outfit to wear. Oh, I do have a new outfit to wear, too.

Okay. What is it, like an all-time gangster suit? Yeah, a zoot suit, you know, stripes and stuff. You're going to go wear a new outfit to go see The Outfit, right? That's right.

That's right. I look like Jim Carrey. Like who? Like Jim Carrey.

Why Jim Carrey? Well, from what was that movie, that movie he was in where he had the zoot suit on, he was a kind of a gangster guy. Oh, okay. Maybe before your time.

Yeah, probably. I keep watching a movie and go, I know I've seen this movie before, but I don't remember how it ends. Right.

And that was only two weeks ago you saw it. Yeah, right. So, we're going to see The Outfit today.

Right, right, right. I'm sorry, we talked with The Outfit. Well, yeah, we talked with them.

The Outfit, we talked with Mark Noira and Mike Gorman of The Outfit. And they're an original band. It's out of Chicago.

It's doing some great things and hitting the Billboard charts, too. Yes, they are. Yes, they are.

I mean, many of our listeners out there probably recognize the name Mike Gorman. When we talked to him a while ago, he's an original member of Hez Band. Right.

And so, The Outfit is some really good, straight up rock and roll is what it is. That's right. So, give them a listen whenever you get a chance, but let's listen and see what they have to say right now.

All righty. Sounds good. Hey, welcome to the show, everybody.

We're meeting today with the band The Outfit. We're speaking with Mike Noira, the drummer, and Mark Noira and Mike Gorman, the bass player. How are you guys doing today? Good.

Good. How are you guys? Good. Doing dandy.

Good to hear. Especially in this climate. How about it? With all the crazy stuff going on around the world.

Exactly. How is that affecting you guys? And have you been able to play at all or play any gigs recently or over the summer? It's been pretty tough. I mean, we started out the year with a bang because we went out to the West Coast and did some touring.

We got to play in February, right before all this stuff hit. We hit Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix. We got back and the world exploded.

It was like, what happened? And we had all these dates booked for the summer, a lot of them opening for Puddle Mug and King's X and a bunch of great stuff that all got canceled. So we've been trying to figure out how to keep the train rolling without being able to tour or play. Without the wheels coming off.

Yeah. We've been doing some writing, recording. We've done one live stream show, right Mike, in August? Yeah, we did one live stream thing, we've got another one coming up.

We did do kind of a cool thing at the very beginning of summer, this festival in England, but they did it virtually. Us playing in our kitchens and bathrooms on four separate screens. Split screen.

We were doing like four songs for them. And it actually came out pretty good. All the bands were all virtual.

Let me ask you a question, did you have to pre-record all that and then send them the... Yeah, that's the way we did it. We didn't have the software to actually perform live and doing that, because I guess it takes a bunch of whatever, studio equipment or whatever. Right, that's what I was asking you.

We got real creative and what we did is, we all did it with our iPhones. So we basically, like I shot myself playing drums, I'm playing to the song, but I'm basically playing to the track in my headphones. And then I sent it over to Mike and Matt and Andy, we all did the same thing, they sent me all the footage back and then the chore was to sync it up with the track, which actually turned out well.

It looked good. Yeah. You can see it, it's on, I think on YouTube, we have a couple of those songs up, right? Yeah, they're still up there on the Outfit Facebook page.

It actually worked good. I mean, all the bands, a couple of guys were just solo guys, so they just sat there and played. It was all very good.

Yeah. What festival was that, Eric? It was called Breaking Bands Festival, it was in the UK, in England. And we got such a great response on the virtual thing that they want us to come over and play the real thing.

It's actually a real festival every year, but we don't even know if it's going to happen this coming 2021, depending on what happens with COVID, I'm not too hopeful. But yeah, the good part is they invited us over, so hopefully we can get over there and play to the UK people and maybe get some dates around it, obviously, if we're going all the way out there. It'll be cool.

Very good. So tell us a little bit about the band. How did the band get started? When did you guys start and how did it come about? What was the year, Mike? 16 or 17? I don't know.

I think it was 17. 17, late 17, mid 17. Mark and Matt, the brothers, had had bands in the past.

They decided they wanted to, the way I got involved in it, they were going to go in and do some recording. And they asked me if I wanted to come and record with them. I had no idea what they were doing.

I'd never heard it before. I knew the guys. And so I get in there.

The guy, Matt Mercado, the engineer, he turns on the track. They already had drums and guitar and all. I said, okay, Mike, put some bass on this.

And they turn on the track and this ungodly stuff starts coming out of the speakers. I'm like, what are you guys? Instead of just being like doing some recording, it was close to my house. It turned into this big, huge thing, which is cool.

Yeah, we actually got that. I think the first song was Just As One. It's on our first record.

It was the first song we actually recorded, me and my brother. And then Mike came in and did the bass. And then I had known this guy, Andy Mitchell.

He's actually in Phoenix. I used to live in Phoenix for 13 years, back in the mid-90s to the mid-2000s. But I met Andy out there, and I thought he had a great voice.

He kind of sounds like Robin Zander from Cheap Trick, kind of like the guy from the Toadies or the guy in Chevelle. Just a voice that I'm attracted to. I really like that style.

So when we were putting this together, I thought, wow, maybe we could talk to Andy and see if he'd be interested in this. So once Mike laid the bass down, I sent the track over to Andy and said, would you put some vocals on this? Let's see what it sounds like. Did you have vocals already for it? No.

We had him write it. He said, Andy, you write the vocal. And here it is.

Here's the song. Do whatever. Right.

The first demo he laid down, we didn't really care for the lyrics. And my brother Matt actually fine-tuned the lyrics a little bit. And then he redid it again.

And he sent it back. And we were like, wow, OK. This sounds really cool.

I think at that point, did we let you hear it? Or did you come in and do something else? Or I forgot how we? Well, once Andy was done, the rough tracks would get compiled. We'd take a listen to them. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember having my iPhone and playing for Mike the finished product with Andy singing that in the studio. Because we were doing another song.

We were going to try another song. Right. And Mike was like, holy crap.

The kind of times we live in now, which are pretty crazy, without COVID, was the whole record was done. And then to get a mix, it goes out to this guy, Earl Wild in Los Angeles, with the press of a button. And he works fast, overnight.

He'll mix the song and send it back. What do you think? Yeah. And we just boom, boom, boom, did that, boom, did that, did that.

And the whole record was done and out before I ever met the singer. Yeah, that's crazy. And we went out to dinner one time and said, oh, nice singing.

Oh, nice bass playing. It was bizarre. Because we figured this sounds really good.

What do you guys want to do? Do you want to go for it, start a band? Yeah, why not, right? So yeah, and Andy, we had a rehearsal. It wasn't the first show. We figured, all right, we got the record done.

We better rehearse live. See if we can pull this off. And Andy came in for two or three days from Phoenix.

And yeah, like Mike said, the first meeting we met at Moretti's. And we had dinner, right? All of us. Yeah.

Four of us. And it's just a bizarre way to put a band together. But I mean, from the ways I had done it in the past.

Yeah. But. The crazy part, it was like, after we had dinner, we went back to my house, and we tried it live.

And I think we were all just amazed. We were like, that sounds good, right? That's not bad. What did we do here? Yeah.

And that's how it started. And then from there, we had a lot of, what was crazy is we had a lot of success with the first record. Because we released a single, Soldier Boy, which went out to rock radio.

And we had a great response to it. And it just kept climbing and climbing. We actually reached 34 on the Billboard Mainstream rock chart, which was amazing.

Because we're with all these big time, big league guys, which was really cool. So we had that going on. And then we lined up our first show.

It was at the Rock House, right? Yeah. April of what? 18, I think it was. It's anything, right? That sounds about right.

Yeah. And we were surprised ourselves, because we had a very large turnout for our first show ever. We were kind of like surprised, right? I mean, so we, you know.

Yeah, there were a lot of curiosity seekers, because it's in our area. Yeah. The club was in the Chicago area.

That's when the Billboard stuff was hitting, right? And so there were a lot of people, a lot of guys I've known for a long time, but I haven't seen in a long time. And they were coming out, what the hell are you doing? More thought. So who did most, so did your brother Matt write the music? It's kind of like a, yeah, a combination of certain songs, different things.

I mean, I think like the main riff in our song like unfolds. Matt wrote that, he wrote just one. Andy writes a lot of the main melodies.

But we all kind of like, the way it usually goes down is Andy will come up with a basic song structure and he'll send it over to me. I'll listen to it. If I like it, whatever, I'll start putting drums down to it.

I'll send it out to Mike and Matt, say, check this out. They'll get familiar with it. And we started building the song in LA basically, right? Yeah.

And we get in and usually by the time we get in to actually record it, everybody knows pretty much what they want to do. Yeah. And we build it from there.

But each guy kind of does their own. I think it works because each guy just does their own thing. You know, it's not like I'm telling Mike what to play.

Mike's not telling me what to play. You know, we're vice versa with the other guys. It's basically like we all got our little lane and we got our own style.

And I think that's like part of the magic of why it works because each guy is just doing what they do. That's how we play. We're not trying to imitate this guy or do this guy or do that.

We're doing our thing, right? Right. So is Andy still living in Phoenix? Yeah, he's still in Phoenix. Yeah, he's in there.

We tried to get him to move out here, but he said, you guys are nuts. Yeah, I can't believe it really. Yeah.

But yeah, he's still there. It's a little challenging. I mean, but it works.

I mean, he flies in when he needs to. And, you know, we'll do some of these tour runs where he'll fly in and then we'll just hop in, you know, the car or the van and head out. You know, a lot of Midwest stuff, a lot of like Detroit, you know, Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

So now you're mostly playing clubs or are you doing some festivals or did you? We've done a little bit of both. We've done a lot of clubs. We've done Rock USA Festival.

Is it Oshkosh? It's outside of Oshkosh. Yeah, last summer we did that. Unfortunately, it's the same guys.

They do Rock USA and Country USA and these big campgrounds. They get massive turnout. And this year, of course, they couldn't do it.

And they're going to close their company. They're going to go bankrupt from COVID. I guess they pre-sold a lot of tickets.

I mean, it's unfortunate, but I'm sure they're pre-selling tickets and spending the money to run their operation or whatever, but they're not able to refund the people that bought the tickets. It's a big mess. So, you know, they're filing bankruptcy, which kind of sucks for the people that bought the tickets.

You know how that goes. So it was a bankruptcy court and, you know, they're pointing out a little bit of money to whoever, you know, they can or whatever. Yeah, it's tough.

Really good people over there at Rock USA. They treated us really well. It's massive.

There's several stages and all the tents and all this stuff going on. It's a huge campground. Yeah, we've been playing clubs.

We did Arcata Theater. We opened up for Accept, which was pretty crazy. That's what I'm saying.

We opened up for Accept. So that was interesting. That was last year.

And then we got, like I said, we got a bunch of shows canceled this summer that were bigger venues. Like we were going to play St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit, opening for Puddle of Mud, which is like a thousand plus theater. Arcata, again, we were booked in there, right? With King's Attics, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. We're getting offers from out of state, and then they have to resend the offer.

Yeah. Missouri's open. Come down here.

Yeah. And then they're like, no, no, wait. We're not sure if we're open yet.

Yeah. So it's been that. Yeah.

Everywhere's just about open the air right now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I talked to our booking agent, and he was just like, I don't know what to tell you guys.

It's just like, I got these dates for you in 2022. I'm like, what? Why then? I don't know. He goes, yeah, because it's just crazy, because they don't want to keep booking, because these agencies, and I feel really bad for them, because they keep booking stuff.

And then what they were doing was just, all right, we're going to push it back out here, and we're going to push it out here. And the dates are never coming through. They're never playing through.

So now I think their attitude is like, let's not book anything. Let's wait and see what happens. What I'm hearing now is like, maybe spring, summer of next year, if this vaccine goes through.

All we can do is hope for the best. Yeah. We just got to try to hang on.

Yeah, we're just trying to keep as busy as we can with the band and keeping it alive. And we're doing a live stream show next Saturday, right? November 21st. November 21st.

It's going to be a live stream at the WC Social Club. So it's $5 to view it on Beats, is the name of the site. And for $5, you get to see the concert.

And then we're giving people a free outfit T-shirt and also a download of our new album, Viking. So it's a pretty good deal for $5. That sounds great.

Now, your first album was just self-titled Outfit, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And now you've got a new one out that came out in February, right before all this happened.

Yeah, right. It's called Viking. Yeah, so we're doing all right with it.

I mean, it's very challenging to promote with the COVID thing, I mean, trying to get attention. But we did okay. We put out a single, Come Alive, and it did pretty well.

We didn't get on the main Billboard chart, but we got on the bubbling up chart. What do you think it is, 22 or something? I thought it was like 14. It wasn't 14? It might have been.

I went around and told her. But our video, Viking, we did a lyric video for that. They've got a lot of plays on YouTube.

I think it's 350,000 plays or something. Wow, that's great. Yeah.

And, I mean, that's good for us. I mean, Johnny Depp sneezing gets two million hits overnight. Right.

But it was good for us. It's a viral video. I still can't figure it out.

Yeah, we have these guys who work within Germany that do our lyric videos. I just kind of would give them the idea, like, this is the song Viking, this is what it's about. Well, I watched it, and I was wondering where you guys got the scenes and the Vikings fighting and everything else.

I'm like, that's awesome. Germany came up with all that stuff, and somebody approached me and goes, man, you guys must have huge budgets. You guys filmed all this? That was my next question.

We have a band. We're also Viking reenactors. It actually wasn't that expensive to do that.

I mean, it was some money, but it wasn't crazy affordable. But they do a great job. Yeah, they did Soldier Boy for us too, and they've got a lot of hits too, right? Yeah, that one was... Yeah, Soldier Boy's cool.

Really could send the wrong person to a fit. All those changes going like that. I'm like, these guys must be out of their minds.

I want to meet these guys. They're called Black Sheep Media. They had Jim Edwards based out of Germany.

But since then, I've worked with them a few times, and I recommend them to everybody. They do great work. Road to Rock Radio is proud to welcome Paul Martin of M&R Rush and the Dancing Noodles and Ray the Roadie, the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

Join Paul and Ray as they bring you weekly interviews from bands that have rocked Chicago. It's the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast, Monday night at 6 on Road to Rock Radio. Chicago! This is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie, and we're here to talk to you about GHS strings.

That's right, Ray. Whether you play electric guitar, acoustic or bass, or even banjo, mandolin or ukulele, then GHS has the strings for you. GHS strings are easy to play with a rich, full-balanced tone available in many different gauges.

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Tell me about your success with Billboard magazine. I know what actually happened there. It was with Viking, correct? Or was that your... No, it was your original album, your first album, right? Oh, with Billboard? Right.

Yeah, that's the one we charted. We charted the single at 34 on the mainstream rock charts, so that was pretty incredible. That's awesome.

And then since then, Viking also, like you said, has hit the up-and-coming charts or something. We've hit a number of charts with Viking, too. Like Mike said, I don't know the exact number, Andy, but maybe it was 14 or... I don't see it on the wall.

Well, no, it's not on the wall. I don't know, but somewhere in the teens or maybe not lower than 20, so we made that chart. Yeah, that's how I remember it.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, we made that chart with that. So, yeah, we did okay.

We kind of like, with the pandemic hitting, it just kind of sucked everything out because we had the touring lined up around the record, and I'm sure we would have pumped it even farther if we could. A couple of the industry people said that since everybody's at home, they were looking for stuff to do on their computers. So every once in a while, they'd come across us and that was good.

Yeah, it's hard to work a record without getting out there and playing. Right, exactly. You want to support it.

I mean, that's what we had planned, and that's why we came out in February. We hit that run on the West Coast. We played the Whiskey a Go-Go, which was really exciting for us.

So it was a cool run out West. We actually got a really good response out West. Yeah, fortunately... Probably better than here.

It seemed like it. I mean, fortunately, we usually get asked back. So that's a good sign.

Yeah. So Mike, you're used to the traveling thing, but you haven't done it in quite a few years, right? No, not like boom, boom, boom, one-night stands like that, no. Of course, Mike, you played with... We interviewed you once before with Taz Band.

Yeah. Well, those bands, back in the day, those bands would work constantly, and there were live venues everywhere. And people actually went out and saw live bands.

Now it's like you've got to really work hard to get people to come out. And now with COVID, a lot of people just don't want to deal with it, even if it's like limited seating. They're like, no, I don't want to be inside.

And it's like, okay, you've got to respect it. Now, Mike, what's your history of playing? When did you start playing, or where did you play with anybody else that we may know? I started, probably not one you've known, but I started really young when I was like, I mean, I started playing when I was like 13, but I joined my brothers, or were older than me, my two brothers, Matty's in the band now, but they had put me in their band. It was a band called Oasis.

It was spelled O-A-C-E-S. And they recruited me when I was 16. And I got an early education because they were playing all the bars.

Back then, we were playing beginnings. We were playing Haymakers, Night Gallery. I was a kid.

It was great for me because I was drinking. And I was like in these clubs, but we were nothing huge. I mean, we were just a moderate band.

We opened up for a lot of the bigger Chicago bands. Back then, we opened up for the boys. I think Off-Broadway we even opened up for, or Central College at that time.

Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, so we were mad. Before I was in the band, those guys opened up for, I know they opened up for like John Cougar, Mellencamp at beginnings way back in the day.

So I was always active in the industry as far as playing live. We did a lot of recording too. So we'd always record up at Solid Sound Studios in Hopkins States and always cancel the recording, doing demos, shopping, trying to get signed, trying to get a record deal.

So you were playing original material and happy stuff and cover stuff too? Yeah, we didn't do much covers. We were always an original band. We never went to the cover scene route.

So we always played original music. It seems like it was a little bit more accepted back then too, being an original band. It sure did.

It was, especially at the club level, these bigger clubs, they would encourage. It's like, well, guys, if you can't bowl good, bowl hard. And they would encourage you to do something a little different.

It's just rock music, but now people want to hear note for note stuff that they know. Yeah, it's a different scene now. It's really weird.

I mean, it's just, I guess I can appreciate it up to a point, but I guess it's a cover scene and people want to see these bands that are out there making big money doing covers, just going in and playing all the hits. Basically, people want to get drunk and listen to the hits, right? Yeah, and a lot of the bands get really good at it. Yeah, then you got the cover bands that are doing one act, like Alice Cooper cover, Tom Petty cover, that kind of thing.

So it's different. It wasn't like that back in the day. No, there were some fun cover bands.

There was a band called Dr. Pop and the Headliners. Right. Who were like just the craziest guys and girls.

Yeah. But they were really good and they did 50s music. Yeah.

And it seemed like, wow, that was a long time ago. Well, not really. It was only 20 years ago.

But Jade 50s was another one. Yeah, Jade 50s. Yeah.

And people loved it. But for the most part, I was playing down at Rush Shop and all these places on Rush Street and stuff. The bands, they would encourage original music.

Yeah, I mean, the big bands back then, the cool thing was Mike was in Pez Band. They were signed to passport or whatever. Off-Broadway was out there on Atlantic.

You had bands like The Kind. Remember The Kind? Sure. They were out there.

I think they had their own little label thing they did. But those were the bands that were kind of like Du Bois, Trillian. Remember all those bands? Oh, yeah.

That's kind of what we've built our podcast on, really, is trying to bring some of the old bands in and current bands, too, like yourself. Yeah. But also talk with some of the guys in the band, in the current bands, who have the history behind them, too, like Mike and yourself.

Yeah, so we're trying to... We're the older guys trying to do the newer thing. That's right. But it's working, so keep going.

So with this pretty much shut down now, are you guys working on any new music now? Yeah, actually, we just recorded a new original song last month. You know, it's just the vocals just got done just as we speak. Yeah.

We've been doing this song live as an encore and a cover song. And the guy who's the engineer for our stuff said, I want you guys to record that, I won't even charge you. Yeah.

So we did it, and it's God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. Okay. It came out great.

Yeah, so we got a few things up our sleeve. We actually did another cover, too, but I won't even get into it. But we're probably going to release a couple covers, you know, just for fun during the COVID lockdown thing.

Well, I've found that over the years now, actually doing the whole album, people don't buy whole albums. You know what I mean? It's almost better to release a song at a time. It's tough, you know.

But the whole thing with that scenario is it's really tough to... You're right, it's tough to generate income. It's not like the old days where you put out an album and you could bank on, you know, someone buying the whole album, even if they liked one song. It was really kind of the only way to get it.

I mean, that stuff, you know, I mean, they kind of did away with singles for a while. You know, there was a streak of time where you could just, if you liked a band or you liked one song, you still would buy the full record, you know, to check it out. And you're able to make money.

But nowadays, like you just said, it's basically everything's free. So you can go on Spotify and, you know, everything's an on-demand society. So you're not going to sit in your car listening to the radio.

I hope I hear the outfit sometime soon. You're going to go on YouTube. You're going to go on Spotify and you're going to just listen to it or scream it in your car, you know, or do something like that.

But you're right. I mean, the thing, we're kind of old school, so we like to do the album deal and put the full album out. I agree with you.

I'm the same way. But I'm just saying that now, now it's almost, I mean, it's okay to put all those songs on an album. But I say release them as you get them, you know.

Yeah. The thing is, like with the promotion end of it, when you're doing, you know, it's kind of hard to, because our press department at the label will send out, you know, a full album to be reviewed or whatever, you know, so it's kind of like, I don't know the angle yet if we're putting out one song or two songs that someone's going to review it or how it would work. But, you know, times are changing constantly, like you said, but you're definitely on to something, you know, bands releasing, you know, one, two, three tracks.

So you may put out like a three song, you know, a special release with these two covers and, you know, the new song we recorded. Yeah. A lot of people are just putting out one at a time.

Yeah. Or two at a time. Yeah, we'll figure it out.

But, you know, I don't know if it'll be this year or early next year, but we'll see. I think a number of years back, Wilco came out with Yankee, Foxtrot Hotel, and they released a song, one song at a time. They did one song and next week they released another one and then eventually they compiled it into one album.

But that was probably 15 years ago when they did that. Yeah. Groundbreaking.

Yeah, a lot of bands do that too. They'll release like, they'll have an album in the can, but they'll put out like, all right, we're going to release, like you just said, three songs now and then we'll do another song next month, another song. Depth Catcher, it's a full record.

Well, like you said, it's a whole different scene nowadays, not only in the clubs, but also in the way people listen to music. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, it's just, you know, if you think about it, you know, the vinyl album, you know, pretty much dead now. I know there's a little resurgence with our record collectors, you know, listen to them, but vinyl died, cassette tape died, right? CD died. And now, even the digital download has died because, you know, everything is streaming.

So when Apple, Apple Music, you know, steered away, you know, when that happened, when, when Apple got into the downloading scene, I was like, oh, well, it sucks, but at least you can still make, you know, 70 cents a song or whatever you're making. People are downloading it. A couple pennies a song, right? Yeah, it's even worse.

They steered away from that and they went to the streaming end of it and they're pushing that end of it. Apple Music is, if you look at iTunes, it's really now almost non-existing. You can still download, but no one does.

So it's, you know, they wanted all that subscription money. That's the way they do it. Yeah, the royalties on, on the streaming is really disturbing.

I mean, it's, it's like under a half a penny a stream, you know, a song, which is insane. So, you know, you have to do, you know, to make any kind of money, you gotta do tens of millions of streams on a song or two. Even if you do a million streams, it's not much income.

It's probably like four or five on your end if you're lucky on a million streams. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty tough.

but that's, that's the world we're in right now until something else pops up. But, you know, you gotta, you gotta try to make your money on, you know, live performances and merchandise and that kind of thing. So, so how would you guys, how would you describe your music for somebody who's never heard the band? Depends on where they're coming from, but I know, I call it rock music.

Yeah. Or if you have to get technical, it's hard rock music. It's not metal.

Or if they know anything about bands, I'd say it's Les Paul's and Marshall's on ten. Yeah. It's just a guitar bit.

It's a rock bit. Yeah, it's guitar rock. And if it's anything, it's, it's throwback music.

Yeah. Guitar rock with good, good vocal melodies, you know, hooks, that kind of thing. Well, I read on your website, it says, original, old, rock.

So, I think that they kind of does describe it as. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's good.

So, so, speaking of streaming services in Spotify, we can find you on Spotify, right? And then iTunes and. Right, all that. Yeah.

Digital providers, Spotify, Apple Music, you know, YouTube, everywhere. I mean, all the, all the digital sites we're on. And, and what about, what about a website or Facebook page or Instagram? I mean, also, too, if you wanted to buy a physical copy of a CD, if you really wanted one, they're, they're available.

You can get them on Amazon or the outfit website. You know, you can order from there. But yeah, our website is the outfit that rocks.

That's the name. That's our web address. And that would lead you to all the, you know, social sites like Facebook and, you know, Twitter and Instagram, all that stuff.

Very good. All righty guys. thanks a lot for meeting with us today.

Hopefully, hopefully, everybody will be back out playing soon. Maybe you'll be pushing, maybe you'll be pushing two albums. We'll see.

Yeah. Thank you guys for being patient. And I know the museum down there, you know, Romero gets updates, as you know.

Right. And it's like, they're cranking down there. So I'm looking forward to that too.

Yeah. We're looking forward to get back, get back in there. I love, you know, Mark, but we, we do a show from, from the, from the museum.

Yeah. The studio there that they've kind of supplied. And, but then, but they've been doing a lot of work.

We haven't been there since March. Yeah. But they've been doing a lot of work.

Ray's actually been in there working quite a bit and doing and helping out periodically. And it looks like they're, they're getting ready to rock and roll. So I'm looking forward to that.

Cool. Yeah. I look forward to coming down and checking it out.

Yeah, for sure. Most definitely. Alrighty, guys.

Thanks a lot. And thanks for joining us. Continued success with continued success with both your albums and good luck and hope you get out there soon and start playing.

Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Take care. Take care. Bye.

Bye. That was Mark Noira and Mike Gorman of the band, The Outfit. They've got some great music there.

Some great straight up rock and roll. Right. I mean, and, you know, the amazing thing is all they do is originals.

They do not do covers. Right. And their stuff, it sounds great.

There's some great music they're putting out there. Right. We missed out.

We talked with Andy Mitchell, the vocalist and guitar player. And of course, Mark's brother, Matt Noira, who also plays guitar. But it's kind of interesting how they got together and started the band and had all the albums done before Mike even met the lead singer.

Exactly. That's pretty amazing. But it's, it's the new way of, of doing things and sending things via a file or whatever and learning music.

And it's certainly, certainly not the way that I was used to brought up. But, but you have to make, make do and accommodate, especially in these hard times. No, for sure.

I mean, we can't get together to do anything and play together. Can't do anything else. So it's got to be online.

Our interviews. I mean, I'm sure everybody realizes our interviews since last March have been on Zoom. Right.

We probably did more on Zoom now than we've done in the studio, in the studio or live. Right. Right.

Right. So hopefully we'll be getting back to that. Hopefully next spring.

Yeah. Well, let's keep our fingers crossed. But in the meantime, check out, check out the outfit and check out their music.

They've got some really good stuff there. Yeah, they got some YouTube videos there on Spotify and on Facebook. You can find them all over there.

Speaking of the studio, do you know that our studio is located at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 in beautiful downtown Joliet, Illinois? I used to know that, but I haven't been there in a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

That's that's where it's at. It's at the museum there. So and they're getting they're probably going to be getting ready to open probably next spring.

Things are moving along quite well. I've stopped by there a couple of times and checked it out and things are really moving along. And since I've got the museum on my mind, they also have a radio station, an Internet radio station, Road to Rock Radio.

And every Monday night at 6 p.m., you can find our podcast. Yes, I said it. Our podcast at 6 p.m. on Road to Rock dot net.

Listen every Monday at 6 p.m. All right. I'll do that. Please.

Thanks for listening today, everybody. And we'll see you next week with another exciting interview. Episode.

An episodic interview. See you. See you next week.

Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music that's played on this podcast. The music is used to promote the band or musicians that are interviewed.