Blue October is one of Houston music’s big success stories, a platinum-certified act approaching 30 years in a chew 'em up, spit 'em out industry. Furstenfeld is the band’s singer, guitarist and centerpiece and the group still has a solid nucleus of founding members, including his brother Jeremy on drums and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Delahoussaye.
Justin would be the first to say it hasn’t always been easy, but Blue October has navigated the infernal maze of the music business. He’s aware the band might easily have been another pile of bones in some forgotten corner of that labyrinth but through it all – the rigors of road life, a changing record industry, drugs and depression and life in general - they have emerged. Perhaps not unscathed, but at least free of the maze's tangle.
“I’ve always said that success is measured on whether your kids are being taken care of and your bills are getting paid. That’s it,” he said. “I’m the most successful man you’ll ever meet because all of those things are being taken care of and I’m happy, and I’m sober and I get to play music for a living and I no longer have to beg for God to forgive me. I can just go out and rock out and take care of my kids and that’s success. Whether or not you’re huge and famous, it really doesn’t matter.”
Since Furstenfeld is in a position to give advice to some of Houston's young exciting bands, groups on the cusp of the sort of success Blue October has enjoyed, we asked for his best recommendation to taking the next step.
“My advice to them is to get the best running vehicle that they have and tour,” he said. “Just get out there and tour.”
He recalled Blue October’s path from its early days. The band formed in 1995 and in the beginning the circle on the map was small – a show in Dallas, one in Austin, head to San Antonio, then back to Houston.
“We would play as much as we could, like once a month, bro, for years, and our crowd got bigger and bigger and bigger and then once it got to a point we started adding shows in San Angelo and Odessa and then we’d break out further.
“If you go to New York, you play New York, you play Boston, you play Philly, you play Chicago. You play every week – Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday – every week for three months straight. Same club, same venue, make a deal with the venue that you’re going to bring X amount of people every week,” he said. “You say, ‘Hey, we’re going to be here next week, same time, bring your friends,’ and if you’re a good band, they’ll bring their friends.
“You can’t just stay in Houston and hope some guy’s going to fly in and see you and take you off to Never Never Land and give you a record deal,” he said. “You can’t just put all your eggs in one basket and hope that you’re going to get some big record deal.
“You can’t do that because they don’t have big record deals anymore,” he continued. “They do what’s called ‘360’ deals now because the record industry is no longer what is used to be, so nobody is going to give you millions of dollars. They’re going to give you a 360 deal, which means they want 20 percent of your publishing, 20 percent of your touring, 20 percent of your merchandise and then they want 85 percent of your album sales. You’re never going to make money unless you’re huge.
“But,” he added, “if you can be proactive enough to book places like Schuba’s in Chicago, House of Blues in Boston and you just keep doing it over and over and over again, then when you’re done with that spot, you go to the center of America – Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver – you hit those markets and you do it all the time. Salt Lake City, Vegas, L.A. And you just keep doing it, you live on the road, you tell your girlfriend you won’t see her for six months, peace out, bye. And you just do it. That’s it.”
Furstenfeld knows the industry model has pivoted to all things digital, but Blue October owes a huge debt to terrestrial radio stations, most notably Houston’s KTBZ, 94.5 FM, aka The Buzz.
“Every one of those cities, you go visit your local radio station,” he said. “I know it’s all about streaming and stuff these days, but your local radio station is the only thing that is going to put music and the community together. It’s not going to be Spotify, it’ not going to be Apple Music. It’s going to be The Buzz in Houston.
And, if you go support The Buzz, they will support you.
“It’s a lot of hard work,” he said, “but it’s fun work because you meet so many beautiful people on the road. You meet beautiful friends, you meet beautiful women, you meet beautiful businessmen, you create relationships, you create band camaraderie. You learn, you write on the road, you stay in hotels, you party, you get sober, you learn – it’s just an amazing experience.”
That hard, amazing work has created some interesting opportunities for Furstenfeld. Of late, he’s tried his hand at acting, a lifelong love. Lights Out, a new action movie in which he has a small role, released in mid-February. Our chat was planned to cover that ground but the paternal, nurturing side of Furstenfeld was awakened by our line of questions and, perhaps, by being in a clinical setting seeing after a loved one.
“There’s a bigger film out there that I wish everybody would go watch, don’t even worry about all the acting stuff I’m doing right now, go watch a documentary called Get Back Up that we made,” he said. “It’s a documentary about recovery in the music business, it’s on Amazon right now, it’ll blow your mind about how beautiful life can get if you just stay sober and keep playing rock and roll and you keep supporting people that support you. That’s what you should focus on.
“These little action movies that I do, they’re fun, they’re cool. I get to blow people’s heads off, yeah it’s fun,” he laughed, “but that’s not what’s important. It’s the fact that sobriety is possible and recovery is possible and life is possible. And it’s beautiful and you can wrap it in music.”
Speaking of music, Blue October is in the midst of releasing a three-part album series titled Spinning the Truth Around. The first part of the album debuted in October 2022 and the next installment appeared a year later and featured the single “Down Here Waiting.”
“We’re coming out with part three soon which is a remix album, but I think what’s going to be surprising is that we’ve already started on our next album and I think it might surpass the Spinning the Truth Around Part III remix album just because we have a whole brand-new single that’s going to be hitting 94.5 The Buzz soon,” Furstenfeld announced.
A three-part album is ambitious so we asked Furstenfeld if there was an album that was pivotal to his musical upbringing. He went straight to The Cure’s 1989 album, Disintegration.
"You write on the road, you stay in hotels, you party, you get sober, you learn – it’s just an amazing experience.”
Photo by Rachel Ziegler, courtesy of Kid Logic Media
Good music, good advice and good living. Maybe being in a hospital setting reminded Furstenfeld of all he’s grateful for today, including the many fans who will attend this weekend's shows and the clarity with which he’ll receive them thanks to more than a decade of sobriety.
“Recovery is such a beautiful thing, sobriety is such a beautiful thing, it’s such a ‘to thine own self be true’ powerful, powerful thing, it gains confidence in people that hated themselves before. I’m the most confident, happy, peaceful man in the world. I may not be good at marriage and I may not be good at relationships but I don’t care. I’ve got three kids, I’m sober, I play rock and roll, I love Houston, I love being from Houston, I love supporting people that support Houston and that’s what it’s about.
“Today I don’t have to go smoke meth and drink alcohol to make myself feel good. I wake up in the morning and I feel good about myself and that’s a direct result of being able to live my dream. And I can only live my dream because of sobriety.”
Blue October are scheduled for March 1 and 2 at 713 Music Hall, 401 Franklin. Sold out.
