Trey Odum

Trey Odum is a musician who spent two years signed to a label and released nothing in that time.

It took two years to get him into the McBastard Studios. On the day it finally happened a piece of bent steel opened up his tire on the way over, and he changed it on the pavement and turned up late rather than call and reschedule. He played two songs, then sat down for Salty's Live Music on the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast, sponsored by Band Groupeez, and said he was happy to finally be there.

Odum moved from Phoenix to Georgia in 2020 with his wife Lindsi, who handles his booking, management and promotion. He explains the economics without flinching. An album is one piece of inventory on Spotify and twelve singles are twelve, which is why everybody releases singles, and a record played all the way through earns a fraction of a penny. Live work is where the money is, and even that is not much. His favorite rooms are small. He played a Johnny Cash themed bar called Far From Folsom up in Prescott, Arizona, where the same crowd turned out every time and his bass player Jeff Heck made sure everybody had a shot of Jack Fire before they went on. He will also correct you: his side band did not open for Slipknot, it played the VIP lounge first at a pavilion Slipknot headlined.

The label years produced nothing he could put out, and he is careful to say the man who ran it, Chaz Childers, was a good man and it simply was not a fit. Before that he was cold calling bars that had never heard of him, getting asked where else he had played and having no answer. There is no health care in this work and no retirement, and he says you do it until you cannot any more and then you are on your own. He has not released anything in several years. Whatever money he makes is going into studio time, a day here and another a month later, and he is recording a full length record after years of being told nobody does records any more.

He is not chasing a clip that goes viral for a week. He wants a record his great grandchildren can put on to work out how his brain and his heart worked once he is not around to tell them. He is paying for it himself, at his own pace, and he stops listening the moment somebody opens with you need to or you should. The record is called Man as an Island. He said the title out loud on this show before anyone else had heard it.