Editor’s Note: It was a most excellent time talking to Dan Murphy of All Good Things for Madness To Creation. In this conversation, it was a wide range of topics ranging from ski trips to Montana to their music and mental health awareness and partnering up with Better Noise and Extreme Music. They’ve even made a theme song for legendary WWE wrestler The Undertaker. On Saturdays, All Good Things will be playing their music via Instagram Live and answering fan questions. Fans can find All Good Things at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/allgoodthingsrock
www.twitter.com/agtrockofficial
www.youtube.com/allgoodthingsrock
www.instagram.com/allgoodthingsrock
Madness To Creation: Danny, how are you doing, thank you for taking the time to interview with me today!
Danny: Good how are you bud?
Madness To Creation: Did Jamie say that you’re out of Montana?
Danny: I lived there but I am out of Los Angeles now. I’ve been in L.A. for ten years now, I can kind of claim it.
Madness To Creation: I’ve vacationed in Montana every year it’s absolutely breathtaking.
Danny: No way, what part?
Madness To Creation: Bozeman, Yellowstone and Glacier National Park.
Danny: I never went to Glacier growing up my whole life and then I moved to L.A., after my sixth year in L.A., I was randomly in Montana and I finally went up to Glacier, and I was like “dude I’ve been missing out my whole life”. It is the prettiest place that I’ve ever been. I’ve been trying like you to go every year and I was lucky enough to go the last two summers, I love it man, it’s so nice up there. I’ve lived in Bozeman for a couple of years. I don’t know if you’re a skier or snowboarder, but all the mountains up there are sick. I love Montana dude, I definitely miss it. Right now, I was actually supposed to be in Canada for a ski trip that I was planning for a year, so like I definitely miss the mountains and everything. Now is a great time to go skiing but no one is allowed to do it. It’s a bummer you know?
Madness To Creation: What’s the one thing that you’re missing the most due to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Danny: To be honest, for me, it’s not that much different because the majority of my days I’m just kind of in the studio and writing. At the most, I’m with a few of the band guys, I guess the biggest difference is having all of my roommates home working and stuff. I definitely miss going to hockey and soccer games, just concerts around L.A., I would usually try to get out and do stuff at night, so it is a little weird to be stuck at home, but it’s kind of cool to see bands doing it and livestreaming it in order to try to keep the people interested and keep the fans on it.
Madness To Creation: Your PR agent said that All Good Things was created by popular demand…
Danny: Yeah, we started as basically writing for TV, commercials, movies and stuff like that and then video games, it was just a bunch of different friends writing different genres, a lot of the times we were writing hard rock stuff, for whatever reason it kind of caught on and got a bunch of views on YouTube, Spotify and everything, and we were getting a bunch of messages from people that we saying, “you should put out an album” and over time we decided to put out an album and we dropped that “Machines” record a couple of years back. It was our actual first full-length as a band, we weren’t a real band up to that point, so we actually got the title of our band invented by the fans. We weren’t ever going to be anything until we got so many messages to go ahead and start it. It’s kind of cool, we got a lot of guidance from where our fans wanted to see where our songs would go lyrically, topic wise, what they are into. It’s been a lot of fun, really stoked that we’ve been taking it serious and putting a lot of time into it.
Madness To Creation: From a lyric and songwriting approach, would you say your fans are your biggest influence?
Danny: I would say yeah! We’re a bunch of serious musicians, we write for tv and licensing. This project in particular has been fun because it definitely topic wise, we can get a little bit weird but it’s about the rise of the underdog and helping out, it’s just pump-up music, a lot of it is just to get the adrenaline going, other stuff goes a little deeper, a lot of the new material we cover a lot of current and relevant topics, especially with this whole Covid thing. We wrote a couple of songs in the last year that seems so relevant that I’m dying to release these songs right now, cause I couldn’t imagine a more current couple of tunes right now. It’s weird because we’re sitting on a ton of music and as the world gets crazier and crazier, our music couldn’t get more relevant. We just can’t wait to get this stuff out there honestly so we can connect with people.
Madness To Creation: My question is is the tour providing support for Stabbing Westward still going on or is everything up in the air?
Danny: Yeah, I mean obviously we’re all a little nervous about everything with going on and everyone is kind of living day to day and trying to figure it out, but yeah we’re still going for it, we’re all in until we hear otherwise. As far as I know, we’re right on the edge of it, we’re all hoping it goes down, but if it doesn’t, worst case scenario, we’re going to be able to get some other stuff this summer I’m hoping, but it’s a rough time for all of the bands that want to get out there and play music, we’ve definitely been itching to play for a long time. We’re really stoked to get out there and really play anywhere, we’re going to do everything that we can to make it happen.
Madness To Creation: I’ve always wanted to ask Stabbing Westward when they meant in the song “Shame”, “how can I have sex without you”, what’s your favorite misheard lyric?
Danny: Dude, that’s a tough one, awhile back I went through Instagram where I just kind of went through some random misheard lyrics. I don’t know why I’m thinking of this, but we would always sing “three babies out of the backseat singing to me”, which is totally the wrong lyric, but every time I heard that song, I was always singing that, there’s a bunch of them, but for some reason that’s the only one that comes to mind right now. But misheard lyrics, we got a few of them, we got a song called “Beginning of the End”, the second part goes, “there’s a red dawn over the land, face stealing a tan”. A guy on YouTube commented “there’s a rectum over the lamb” it was really random, I don’t get it! We have a few misheard lyrics now and again.
Madness To Creation: My other favorite is in “Drag the Lake” by The Amity Affliction, when they yell “Kick It” some YouTube commenter put “Chicken”,and I can’t hear it the same ever since.
Danny: Have you seen the meme “Black Betty”, that meme on Instagram meme was the funniest thing ever. I’m a big pun guy, I’m a big dad joke guy.
Madness To Creation: Give me your favorite dad joke.
Danny: You put me on the spot. I usually think of stupid stuff when I’m sitting around, I was thinking of a dad joke the other day, but “What’s the worst breakfast in California”
Madness To Creation: I have no idea.
Danny: San Diego.
Madness To Creation: It took me a couple of seconds but I got it.
Danny: Dude I just love bad humor. I’m into it.
Madness To Creation: I’m kind of the same way.
Danny: Why did the blind guy ask for pepper for dinner?
Madness To Creation: I have no idea.
Danny: He can’t sea salt. That one is bad too.
Madness To Creation: For sure! *laughs* Sam got detention for singing in class. You could say Sam sung.
Danny: Samsung. Oh my God. I live with a school teacher and all I get is ridiculous humor all of the time man.
Madness To Creation: Your PR agent also said that you wrote some stuff for gaming, what is your favorite project that you have done? Also, what do you look for when you create a song for a video game?
Danny: When we write, we don’t write specifically for a particular game. A lot of times, it’s more like when you’re writing a song, it just happens. We’re lucky enough to have a company called Extreme Music which has really helped along with Better Noise. It has really gotten our stuff on the map and out there, and they’re kind of the ones connecting the dots and got us in games like WWE and stuff like that, so definitely that wrestling game is one of the coolest that I’ve stumbled upon, just seeing a guy walk out to the ring and they’re playing a song called “Fight”. I mean we didn’t write it specifically for the wrestling game, obviously a lot of the songs that we write, we’re trying to capture feeling and energy in it, so a lot of times when we’re writing in the studio, we’ll just have a monitor on playing some epic movie or something or something crazy like that. Once we’re writing, we’re visualizing what that song will be and what scenario it could be in and usually it’s not for anything specific and once it pops up in a game or something like that, it’s just a really cool surprise. I would say 98% of the time, we have no idea where the music ends up and someone will go on YouTube and say, “Dude, I just heard your song” in literally anything, Olympic commercials, or NHL or the NFL.
We had a really cool team in Italy that took our song “For The Glory” and they used it for their hockey team and they used it in their playoff run, every day that they’re playing that song, it’s an older promo and everything. It’s super cool man, because you have no idea how all of this stuff is going down. Unfortunately, this year they were killing it and we’re undefeated in the playoffs and they had to pull the plug on the entire season, but I think the Fox is overtaking it this year. It’s pretty cool, we don’t really write anything specific for people, but a lot of times, people feel that it works with the project that they’re working on. We’ve been lucky enough with that where it’s gotten us a lot of exposure and it’s gotten a lot of people on YouTube interested in the band. I feel lucky.
Madness To Creation: So you said the song “Fight” was on WWE, which wrestler comes out to that song?
Danny: It’s funny, it was just for the game but we actually did write a song for a wrestler. We actually, I’m trying to think of his name, because he was out of Los Angeles. He was this cocky, sexy, shirtless wrestler, we did a video for the dude. We wrote the song for him as a custom, and I sang the vocals for like 80% of it, and he was kind of like singing into it. He was actually walking out to the ring with that song, which was super exciting, and I actually had The Undertaker use a different song for awhile, which was really cool because obviously since I was kid, I knew who that was. To be honest with you, I never played or bought the WWE game, Andrew actually bought the game and he was the one that was playing it, so he was the one that sent me the video that had the song playing. I can’t even remember who the wrestler was to be honest with you, I’d be lying if I made it up right now, it’s on our Instagram, I’ll scroll back through it and show it to you.
Madness To Creation: Wait a minute, so The Undertaker used a song of yours?
Danny: Yeah man! Like I said, we do the licensing for the same deal as TV and commercials, whatever we can do, and it was just randomly a song that he used, I was really stoked. It was kind of a more popular one as far as that goes, the song is called “Devil Inside”, that’s the name of the tune. Another shout out to Extreme Music, they’re the reason that stuff gets out there, so we’re definitely grateful to have them on our side.
Madness To Creation: Can you give us a quick plug for Extreme Music?
Danny: Extreme Music is awesome! They’re a great licensing company based here in Santa Monica and they’ve been hustling ever since we started working with them and getting our music placed all over, I mean we really got them to thank for the snowball effect to where it went on YouTube, the fans liked it and all the sponsoring. We didn’t even know that was out there and it all started snowballing for the whole band really. We do have them to thank. Also shout out to Better Noise, our new label, we signed with them not quite a year ago, but looking forward to working with them in the future and putting out our full-length this year, we got a ton of songs that we’re sitting on, things are looking up here and we’re looking forward to the future.
Madness To Creation: Do you having any working titles for the songs or the album or is it kept under wraps?
Danny: I don’t think I can give away the album title, cause we’re not really sure about that, we definitely have a solid idea, and we’re working on some artwork for it. We’re going to try to do an Instagram live where we perform every Saturday for as long as this lockdown is in effect. As long as the five of us can be healthy enough to be in the same room together, we’re going to try to play some new stuff every week for everybody. We’ve released a new single called “End of the World”, another one I’ve been dying to put out is called “Hold On”, lyrically the chorus is awesome and there’s a bunch of other cool stuff in the works, another cool song called “Undefeated”. We probably have 20 or 30 songs that we’ve wrapped up over the years, we’re just trying to figure out what to focus on and what to finalize, and what’s going to make the album and what’s going to stay on the shelf. I just got off the phone earlier today and we were working on with another band that we’re going to do a collaboration with, I’m pretty excited about that. I know a lot of other fans like that band so hopefully another month or so we’ll get that out for the people and everything.
We just worked with another dude known as Hyro The Hero, shout out to that guy, he wrapped on a bridge on our song that we’re working on for a song called “Do It Now”, that part is really killer, I’m pumped on that song too. Like I said, for this project, we just wrote for the fun of writing together for licensing, and now that we’ve become a real band, we’re focused on what we’re saying in a lot of those songs a lot more. I just think that we all care a lot more, there’s a lot more time and energy. Before, we were just putting out whatever and didn’t put a lot of time and thought into it, and now we’ve got the time to stick around, we’re just really trying to make a killer record. I think we’re all really proud of those songs, just kind of waiting for the Covid thing to die down so we can hit the road again and hopefully get that thing out.
Madness To Creation: A couple more questions to wrap this up, at Madness To Creation, we focus on mental health awareness with a focus to normalize mental health conversations, what advice do you have for our readers and listeners?
Danny: I would say I’ve been personally affected by it with people taking their own lives, the thing is, it’s scary, it’s terrifying, I know a lot of people that lost their life to suicide. I think everyone has gone through depression, I go through depression and anxiety, it’s one of those things where you’re feeling that you’re not the only one and you’ve got to talk about it, and if you have a friend that is feeling it, let them know that they’re not alone, the best thing you can do is talk. Don’t keep those feelings to yourself. It’s not going to help keeping it in and letting it manifest. Get it out there, your friends will help you through anything. The worst thing that you can do is keep those feelings to yourself because it’ll tear apart more people than you know.
Madness To Creation: What else would you like to add that we have not covered yet?
Danny: It’s crazy that the Covid thing is the only thing that I can think about. I just want to plug that livestream that we will be doing. I just want to get on and chat with people, we’re going to be doing some giveaways, we’re actually launching a new merch store. “For The Glory” just hit 20 million streams on Spotify, so we’re super stoked about that. We’re putting out some exclusive t-shirts, we got this really killer artist that we partnered with out of Canada and he’s been doing a lot of custom artwork for us. Check out the “For The Glory” lyric video that he helped out with, we got an exclusive t-shirt for that, we got some posters for that. We got a few more shirts that we’re launching on the webstore, just getting that merch out and gearing up to go, hope to get out for that Stabbing Westward tour. We will be livestreaming from our studio every Saturday.
Check out www.allgoodthingsrock.com and we have links for Twitch, Facebook, YouTube and Periscope, everywhere that we’re streaming and that’s going to be the place where you’re going to hear new music first, hopefully we can get some feedback on there and hopefully it can be positive and get this record out sooner than later. We’ve been trying to rig up our studio lately, it’s kind of hilarious. We’re musicians, we’re trying to figure out this livestreaming and all these cameras and trying to keep everyone six feet from each other, it’s interesting. Got a few cameras that I’m trying to toggle in between, we try to mic everything up so it’ll all go through the mixer. It’ll be cool to chat with everyone, it won’t just be a concert, we’ll be answering questions and giving away some stuff, it’ll be fun. It’ll be a good way to kill time with everyone quarantined.
And there you have it! All Good Things have a couple of gigs coming up(Covid-19 permitting):
Fri. 6/12- Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, Canada (w/Stabbing Westward & Eyes Set To Kill)
Sun. 6/14- Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon
For tickets and further information on the gigs listed above, click here.
