LEONIDEN

Musicians and office workers have a lot more in common than you would think. Leoniden, a German indie band are living proof of that. The five of them have gained quite a lot of popularity over the course of the last year, but despite their huge success in recent months, they have managed to stay grounded and continue to take on tasks that many bands tend to leave to their management or booking agency. Suburban Rose had the chance to ask them all about their lives offstage and all the work associated with it.

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Could you introduce yourselves and tell us what each of you do for the band besides making music?

Hi everyone, I’m Jakob. I sing and play keyboard for Leoniden and I’m also the one answering the questions for this interview. Lennart, our guitar player, is who we consider the voice to all the structures we are working with. He’s the guy spending 6-8 hours of the day on his phone, representing the band like a lawyer. Felix, his brother and drummer, is our musical football coach, responsible for our practice routines. Then we have Djamin, who plays the keyboard and percussion. He manages the whole online shop, which is a lot to do: Answering e-mails, packing orders, writing small letters for every addressee, keeping an eye on the inventory, and so on. JP (bass) keeps our backline intact; he’s like the gear guy. And I’m the media allrounder, working with Photoshop, Premiere and Cubase.

When you released your album Again in October you personally handled and sent out every single album preorder complete with personal, handwritten notes. Why was it so important to you to do this yourselves?

We decide many things from the perspective that we had when we were fans ourselves. The things we loved or that we wished for. Like, If I would have received a signed copy of an At the Drive-In vinyl with a small handwritten letter, written and packed by them, it would have made me absolutely happy. Also, music is still a personal thing and should be delivered this way. Nowadays, because of the internet, we consume many fragments that are personalized or pseudo-personal, hence we lack a certain intimacy. I don’t want to be one of 10,000 people that view a personal Instagram story- I want to be looked in the eye by my favorite artists.

How did you acquire all the necessary skills that you need in order to set up and run your own website and merch store and all the organizational skills that come with it?

We started with zero and grew better by trial and error. That’s it. We made a lot of mistakes and took care of not making them again.

What are some downsides to your work ethic? I heard that your own homes have essentially been transformed into storage units for your merch.

Hahaha, yeah, you should visit Djamin’s place. The next answer could be considered a downside:

How do you keep your personal and your work life separate?

It’s just not possible. But in our philosophy that would be some kind of paradox if it were. What we do is a result of our passion and our lunacy. Leoniden was a family and is now a company too. But because we are friends and love each other, it just works for us. And if I would for example trip over a box of merchandise in the morning, I wouldn’t get mad, because I consider it a huge privilege that the things inside the box are a part of the dream we all had when we were teenagers. Selling your own merchandise, surviving as a band- and also as a bunch of friends.

Do you see yourselves proceeding like this indefinitely or could you see yourselves possibly giving up parts of your workload at some point in the future?

We already share some tasks with other people. The most important thing for us is just that we like them. Working with friends!

If the shop gets too big for Djamin, we would hire some friends to help us. And if Leoniden is able to nourish us plus our loved ones, how great would that be?