Bonnie X Clyde lay down vocal-bass grooves at this year's Contact Music Festival
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 19:00:35 +0000
Contact Music Festival: Bonnie X Clyde
When: Dec. 27-28
Where: B.C. Place
Tickets: starting at $135.95 for a single-day ticket at contact-festival.com
Daniel Litman and Paige Lopynski were high school friends in Virginia before moving to Miami and forming Bonnie X Clyde in 2015. They began performing at local music festivals and releasing tracks like Rise Above, and toured Florida with acclaimed producer Skrillex. Now based in Los Angeles, Bonnie X Clyde continues to fuse electropop, synth-pop, house, and trap to acclaim, including a Billboard Dance Emerging Artist mention this past summer. We talked to Litman about his act’s trajectory, what success means in today’s dance music world, and what to expect from BXC’s Vancouver set on the second day of Contact Music Festival.
Q: What size of venues do you play when you headline?
A: Anywhere from 500 to 1,500, and then there are a handful of markets where we can pull more.
Q: How are people finding your music?
A: Probably Spotify, Apple Music, our social media. Maybe not on XM radio with our recent stuff because we’re going a little bit heavier.
Q; What do you mean by “heavier”?
A: When we created Bonnie and Clyde we didn’t have a vision. We were right out of college and to get sustainable by DJing. As we’ve been working on the project, we’ve gotten more clarity. When we went into the studio four years ago we weren’t like, “This is what Bonnie and Clyde music sounds like.” Now we know.
Q: How do your newer songs differ from the earlier ones?
A: It all falls under this genre we like to call “vocal bass,” which means that it’s non-BPM restrictive; the speed is not the same for every track. Most dubstep artists’ stuff is at 150 BPM. We make beats at all types of speeds. And I would say our earlier stuff was more bubbly-pop leaning, whereas our more recent stuff is darker, more cinematic, eerier, epic.
Q: What is your release strategy? A single every few months, an EP once a year?
A: When we started, we didn’t have the luxury of having a schedule. We recorded songs every month but there’s a certain quality control you have to maintain. Going into 2020, we want to put out a song every single month.
Q: When it comes to EDM and online streaming sites and purchasing, how important is it for an EDM artist to maintain a consistent schedule?
A: It depends. You create the expectations for your fans. Some artists have very low Spotify streams, like under 50 thousand per month, and they sell out 1,000-person venues everywhere they go. There are other artists who have 50 million monthly listeners and they can’t sell a ticket. Generally speaking, the most important metric as a dance music artist is how many tickets you can sell. You can have zero followers on Instagram and zero followers on Twitter, but if 1,000 people show up you’re going to get big.
Q: You have a fan base with its own moniker, the Rosegang. How did that happen?
A: Fans gave us roses at a show one time. Then when we passed out the roses, it became a thing. Kids would post on Instagram: “OMG I got a rose.” It just kind of happened. Now at every show, we get promoters to give us a dozen roses to pass out.
Q: What can Contact attendees expect from your set?
A: The biggest feedback that I get from the fans’ perspective, is that they had the most fun (during our sets).
Q: Should they bring roses?
A: Bring roses. And wear rose gear.