TWIS Asks: Fabian Manzano of Boyce Avenue and These Quiet Sounds

We've all heard the story: a group of brothers form a band, play some local bar gigs and post a few cover songs to YouTube. Next thing you know, they're playing sold-out shows around the world. Wait, is that not how these things go? Tell that to Boyce Avenue — the three-piece rock band formed in Sarasota in 2004.

The band's rise to success wasn't quite so cut-and-dry, but they were able to leverage a global audience via YouTube and other social media sites to successfully pursue music in a way that wasn't an option for bands until very recently.

Abandoning the traditional model of building an audience around a local scene and branching out, the band appealed to a global online audience first, affording them opportunities to travel the world and be featured in national outlets, such as "Billboard Magazine" and "Good Morning America." Now, they hope to appeal to a local audience.

In addition to the band, guitarist Fabian Manzano recently launched his own clothing line and design studio in Gulf Gate, called These Quiet Sounds, and he plans to apply what he's learned from the band to his latest endeavor. We stopped by the shop to talk to Manzano about the band, his clothing line and how online marketing is redefining traditional business models.

Tell me how the band got started.

The band is me, my older brother Daniel and my younger brother Alejandro. The three of us grew up here in Sarasota. I started playing guitar when I was 16. It was just sort of a hobby at first; we'd play for family and friends. We started getting better, and we thought we'd try to write our own music, and people responded really well to it. We played a few shows locally, and things started to get more serious. We thought, 'Wow, we might have something here.'

[video id="rYA11kuJOP0" site="youtube"][/video]

You guys pursued music in a really interesting way. How did you use the internet to your advantage?

We were playing college bars in Gainesville, and we saw these people making YouTube videos, and we thought we'd try it out. It was frustrating to play a bar for four hours and feel like you're not being appreciated. We thought we might as well try YouTube, where your audience is much broader. Instead of 100 people at a bar, you can play for the entire world.

We were playing some covers, and we decided to put them on the internet. We uploaded a cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella," and the next day, she performed it at an awards show. People searching for her song started finding our video. That was our first one to get serious traction, and since then, so much has happened. We've been on a record label, off of a record label, toured Europe seven times, the Philippines, Australia and the United States. Things have just been slowly building over time. It seems like only recently that we're starting to get some local traction.

It almost seems like the complete opposite of how most people get started in the industry. 

We were kind of scared at first, because yeah, it is so different than the traditional model. We were confident about it, but we also had no real choice. The traditional model of starting locally, pounding the pavement and slowly building up a following was something we couldn't afford to do. We couldn't afford to give up everything and just hit the road. So we kind of did things the opposite way by building an audience on a global level and then moving more locally.

Did that allow you to skip over a lot of the pitfalls a lot of young bands typically face?

Well, we still started off pretty rough, and we had to learn a lot. We didn't start off with tour buses. We still started in a van, then two vans, then two vans and a trailer. It was a progression. Sometimes, when people have a one-hit-wonder type of success, it's almost like they get handed something on a silver platter, and they don't know what to do when that's gone. So, we're very fortunate to have had that success, but we still learned a lot along the way.

You're playing sold-out concerts to audiences all over the world. Do you attribute that just to your online audience? Is there support from a label?

At this point, we do attribute everything to the work we've done and the audience we've built. We're not on a label right now. We just played Lisbon for the first time to a sold-out crowd of 4,000 people, which is crazy. We've learned to promote our tours on YouTube , Facebook and social media. It's not just us, either. We've built a solid team around us — a publicist, a booking agent, a manager and business manager — it's very much like creating our own record label.

Now that you've opened up your clothing line, These Quiet Sounds, how do you think your two endeavors relate to one another? 

As artists, as much as we'd love to just do the art and not compromise, I think that's kind of unrealistic. There was a time when I was burned out of doing a lot of covers, but that's what drives people to discover us and look at our original music. Every career requires compromise and sacrifice, and if it means getting to travel the world and do what we love, then it's absolutely worth it.

The same applies to our clothing — some of it, we order wholesale. We order our dresses from other manufacturers. It's the same thing as the music — obviously, for me, the more gratifying part is designing and creating shirts, but these other brands that people recognize are what will bring them in the door. Then, maybe they'll like what I'm doing. I've just applied what I've learned from the band to the clothing line. The other clothes are like an opening band. Everybody benefits.

[video id="ViysP4uPwms#t=111" site="youtube"][/video]

Tell me about the concept behind the brand. The theme of peace and quiet seems to be recurring. What does that mean to you? 

Early on in the band, I latched onto that phrase. It was originally going to be the name of a song. I like what it's grown to mean to me. I've always been sort of the quiet, hardworking guy behind the scenes, and it was a way for me to pay homage to other people who are like that — just quiet, artistic people. It also can apply to music, and the way that in addition to the main melodies, there are so many parts of a song working together that people might not notice. The clothing is very font and quote based, so I try to incorporate a lot of phrases that relate to that idea.

Do you have plans to become more involved in Sarasota?

I'm obsessed with this city. I know I want to live here for a long time. My brothers and I all love Sarasota. We pursued music the way we did out of necessity, but we always knew we wanted to come back. We had to build ourselves up first to be able to have some level of local influence. We're passionate about this city, and we want to see it grow.