ALL ABOUT ME

I'm Matthew Oliver and I'm always looking for a new adventure whether that means in the outdoors or on the job market. Most recently I've finished an internship with The Dead Frets, a band from Central Virginia. Over my time with them I handled most of the social media accounts as well as created video and audio advertisements, creating an Electronic Press Kit (EPK), creating new logos and shirt designs, and the list goes on. Following as a more in-depth look at my most recent venture with The Dead Frets.

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My time working with The Dead Frets was fun as well as very educational. The music industry is ever-changing and no time has been more obvious than the past weeks and months through the Covid-19 pandemic. The need to have a large social media presence has definitely been shown through these troubled times as restaurants, bars, and venues have been shutdown, which have always been the traditional outlets for musicians. But with the challenges of Covid-19, the learning experience has still been there, if not more so than if all had gone as planned; as the old saying goes "the show must go on". 

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At the beginning of my internship my first task was to create an electronic press kit (EPK), The EPK was meant to highlight the band and show samples of their music and lives performances and was sent out to venues that they hoped to play at. The EPK can be found at https://thedeadfrets.bandzoogle.com/home. An EPK is necessary to gaining publicity and finding new venues for shows and until I had come onboard they had not had one so it was a from scratch-to completion project. But a successful EPK is not a "one and done" thing, it had to be constantly updated with new material from practices and shows. 

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Another main job I had while working with The Dead Frets was running their social media accounts. These included Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our main focus was building their Facebook page which during my time with them we almost quadrupled the follower count. Included is a link to their Facebook page @TDFrets  as well as a video from their page which I had edited clips together from their entire set at "Kickin' Cancer Out" prior to my time with them the highest view count they had on any video was ~100 and one that I had created and pushed is currently at over 2.6k views. This post included a link to their Spotify page which led to a rise in monthly listeners. The link to this post is titled "The Dead Frets highest view count".

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I was also given the task of designing new logos for shirts as well as printing new shirts. This was different for me as it's something I had not done until working with them. Plus, everyone likes shirts and I specifically like band shirts as that is generally included in my everyday attire. For this I used Cricut to create logos and prints. Once I found a design I liked I would then print it and iron on to a shirt (which took forever). Most of the designs came from similar designs that other bands used or ones that I thought looked cool after messing with them. We decided to try making shirts and stickers on our own in order to save more money rather than paying a big company to print and send low-quality products. Below are some images from the creation of the designs to the finished products. 

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It was a great experience working with The Dead Frets. From what I initially knew I would do with their social media marketing to helping them set up on stage, there was never a dull moment. Working with them helped strengthen my dream of working with a major band or record label and I believe they helped me get that much closer to my dream.