Current in the Stream: Electrik Ants Are Still Livestreaming Simply Because They Crush It

It's almost showtime for the Electrik Ants. They're checking sound levels, getting tuned up, maybe going doing a run-through on the ending of that one song. The players turn their pre-show jitters into the perfect headspace to jam. This is a typical pre-gig prep, with one difference: We aren't at your favorite club, but in "The Lab." This show is a livestream.

The "Lab" is the home base studio for Electrik Ants. "Live From the Lab" has become a bi-monthly livestream that's been presented for over two years. Although lockdowns launched seemingly a thousand streams (some of which are still going strong), most of them have dropped off. The Ants had been trying to figure out how to best stream well before 2020.

The band was formed by brothers Jeff and Dylan Collins, who started writing and collecting players and playing live, in 2018. From the start, the Ants' live shows were dynamic and perfectly orchestrated — from the songs to the visual elements to the transitions.

The band's sound is a blend of cosmic rock and futuristic jams with a base of hip-hop and funky grooves. The current lineup consists of Jeff Collins on ethereal guitar and poignant vocals. His brother Dylan also sings and adds another sonic dimension with moody keys and a unique approach to rap. He will also bang on a drum when called for. Ryan Dahir plays a spaced-out saxophone, utilizing crazy effects pedals that enhance his already stellar playing.

This makes for some never-before-heard sounds. The sleeper of the band is bassist Mike Maschmann, keeping it all together like some sort of funky superglue. One benefit that has already come from the stream was meeting drummer Mayo Valdez, who's played for Charley Crockett. They gelled so well that Valdez is now the band's drummer when he's in town, and will be doing shows with Ants in the Fall. The band went through many lineup evolutions. At one point they had seven members. It was a challenge balancing seven instruments with vocals and egos and a specific vision of how it all should sound and look. Combine that with the fact that they mostly played clubs that did not have a sound system to accommodate the complicated mix.

"We would rehearse specific setlists for a couple of months, then a dress rehearsal where we played the whole thing through because it was so important to us to have transitions, the intros, the outros — we want it to be an arc,"
Jeff Collins says of the band's approach to a live show. "We wanted there to be no time for an audience member to be like, 'I'm gonna go to the bar now, I'm gonna step outside the live show.' [Usually] the song just ends and everybody claps and then there's silence [...] like, 'Which song is next?' and then there's weird silence and then the lead vocalist, like, has to say something to fill in some space. Yeah, it's not really worked out, like, you feel amateurish."

The band members often felt that their hard work in the practice room wasn't translating the way they envisioned to their live show. Then the pandemic hit, and it seemed like a good time to jump into the long-discussed idea to do a regular live stream.

"We had the idea for a while, but it took a while once the pandemic hit to coordinate things. I'd say 2022 we ramped up the stream and by summer we were trying [and succeeding in streaming]," says Jeff Collins. "Adam Sidelsky joined in November 2022 and that's when we really started hitting our stride and managing all the troubleshooting required. [Sidelsky] was [bassist] Mike's friend. Robbie Maysent had been doing the role Adam currently fills ... Adam's been the fifth Ant ever since, helping set up live shows, coming [here] early and helping set up, and coming in on random days we schedule streams."

"Live From the Lab" happens every other Tuesday for the main program; every four to six weeks there's a "Lo-Fi" stream featuring Grammy award-winning producer Jah-Born among others. The Stream can be viewed on the Electrik Ants Twitch channel and their YouTube. If you can't catch it live, it's available on Twitch for two weeks after the stream.

One of the unique aspects of the stream is the band invites a guest artist every week, a veritable who's-who in Dallas music right now. 

"We typically have a guest from the Dallas area, or several, or a whole band," Dylan Collins says. "We've had that happen a couple of times. And so the theme changes depending on who's here. It's really rare that we just have the Ants. So the theme depends on who's coming in and what they excel at."

Previous guests include Jo and Jay Indigo of Chilldren of Indigo, Leland Kracher and Evan Lamb of (trymore)Mojo, Jon Fig of Midnight 30 and Kingclam, Tito Strange, Stan Fransisco and Cam McCloud of Cure for Paranoia, just to name a few.

They've mounted themed shows for holidays and even a streaming festival with seven artists performing, which lasted over six hours. The band also plans to invite touring bands to join them on the stream. It would help introduce out-of-town bands to Dallas and it expands the idea of sharing the stream with other great artists.
A unique feature of the livestream is a live chat that the band can see and respond to from their large reference monitor. This adds a hyper-intimate element to the performance that helps shape it in real time.

"We've had times when Dylan's rapping and picks someone from the chat to include, you know, in real time. You don't really get to talk and interact with fans in real time while you're playing the music ... anything can happen on the stream," says Jeff Collins. "On stage, things are more planned out. On the stream, you just wander off in that direction and suddenly something's happening to you you would never attempt on stage."

Something also unique to the stream is that the audience can tip the band to control the lights. It took a while for everything to come together from a technical standpoint. Production coordinator Sidelsky (better known to the Twitch community as "Ohmnonom"), wears many hats. He's responsible for setting up and maintaining lights and cameras and directing the action on screen. He runs the chat room, tweaks the lights and sound, switches camera angles and even adds random graphics that enhance the overall ambiance.

"Find another stream that does something similar to what we do, because I'm genuinely interested in seeing what the stream looks like," says Jeff Collins. "Because they don't ... as far as I can tell, they don't really exist. The best you get is four-camera, you know, still camera. It's like, hey, there's the singer, one camera, and there's the drummer, there's one camera. The stream has quads ... and they're all in a rehearsal space. It's only kind of interesting. There's no movement."

There's no question that the band aims for a much more ambitious streaming experience than most. Having a dedicated director no doubt makes for a more dynamic and interesting viewing experience with options for more responsive interactions, but that doesn't free the band from technical issues.

"We've had a lot. These days they're few and far between, thankfully," says Jeff Collins. "We've been using this for almost two years now. So the first year was fucking rough. Sometimes it just dropped out completely and we lost whole shows. I was like, 'Oh, you're not streaming anymore.'"

Dylan Collins adds, "We had to replace hardware, I mean to get it to sound right. We built up a stash of cameras. It's been a lot of work for sure. But we genuinely think it's different than other streams people do." Of course, the main point of streaming is to get the music out there and to widen the fanbase. Sadly, it turns out that building an audience is just as challenging as doing it IRL.

"I think the stream is in a really great place. I think the only thing that's missing is the audience," says Jeff Collins. "It's definitely an untraditional Twitch streaming format, meaning we're not just playing covers or DJing, which are the two most common formats. And we don't have boobs."

Sax player Ryan Dahir confirms, "Yeah, we don't have those, which is definitely a barrier, but I mean technically, we have all the bells and whistles that everyone else has, and I do think we bring definitely a different creative approach to live streaming by inviting artists in regularly. So the format's unique and that kind of hurts us a little bit, in terms of natural growth. But I mean, I'm really happy with the way the stream looks and the cool stuff we've got going.

"I think it's a tipping point thing. Like, we have a unique, very high-quality product that we all believe in. I think it's just a matter of time, then there'll be an influx."

That's not to say the stream has no viewers. Besides a small but loyal following, sometimes the band gets the benefit of riding what's referred to on Twitch as a "Raid Train."

"Essentially everyone hangs out in one of these channels. And when it's over at a predetermined time, they will send all the viewers to another channel," says Sidelsky. "And so they'll do that five, six, seven, 10 times or something [and it] snowballs. So we were one of the top slots on one of the raid trains. It's called High Vibes Raid Train. It's like a music festival online every Saturday. We've had as many as 100 people watching, but we average 20–30 solid viewers."

In a perfect world, the stream could fund itself along with even more camera and sound upgrades. The band agrees that would be cool, but they're adamant that money was never the point of the stream.

"I wouldn't say that's really the goal of it," says Jeff Collins. "It's more like for sharing, or having a space for us and all our creative friends to be able to freely just create."

Much like with any creative endeavor, the artist must still find their audience. Websites such as Nugs prove there is an audience for livestreaming (as does Marc Rebillet's career) but it remains to be seen if those same folks would be interested in new music. MTV did change the way we consume music by marrying audio with visuals, so it's not out of the question for interactive livestreams to change how we discover up-and-coming music.

The band continues to do live venue shows, including an album release at the Double Wide in November 2022 for their album In This Economy? But there's no need to wait until the next in-the-flesh show; catch the Electrik Ants every other Tuesday night from the comfort of your own living room. If you're feeling salty, throw the band a tip and have some fun with the lights or give Dylan Collins something to rap about.