Powfu's first time in Florida !!
The Young & The restless by Shelton Hull
Powfu’s first time in Florida, but not his last
It’s mid-afternoon on a Monday in Vancouver when Powfu joins the chat. He’s promoting his “Flooding the Gates” tour, which brings him to the High Dive on Thursday, June 16. He’d already played three shows in Canada, and was looking ahead to making his US debut. Out of the 11 American dates scheduled, five of them are in Florida, because this is the state that he most wants to see. “We set aside a day to visit Disney World, so I’m pretty excited to see that,” he says. “And, also, the sunshine. I really love the sun, so I’m looking forward to that.”
The first thing that comes through from talking to Powfu is that he seems like a really nice guy. Not “nice”, as in just generally polite, but more like genuinely pleasant, amicable. I’m a fairly new fan of his music–indeed, maybe the newest fan of all, soon supplanted by the readers of this article who may be listening to him for the first time at this very moment, or the people who go see him this week because someone else told him to. Personally, I’m bringing someone to the show who has never heard his music, so I totally understand how this guy has been able to build a solid career for himself, from scratch, based almost entirely on word of mouth.
This is Powfu’s first time in the United States, and his first time on the road. He’s already played The Social in Orlando on June 13 and Crowbar in Tampa on the 14th; after Gainesville, he goes next to Underbelly in Jacksonville on June 17, then the Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola on the 18th, before finishing this leg of the tour with four dates in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas) from June 21-24. Other than Houston, he has never been to any of these cities. “There are a lot of places that I wanted to play, but I’m not able to yet,” he says. “We booked this tour a long time ago, so my management team picked locations that were, like, wide open. I want to hit everywhere, eventually.”
Every venue and every city is a completely new experience for him, from top to bottom. That’s a lot to handle, especially given that Powfu, born Isaiah Faber in March of 1987, only recently turned 23. Now consider, also, that these plans were initially made prior to the pandemic, which put those plans on pause for two years. Had the pandemic not happened, he would have surely made his way all the way to Europe and back by now.
Powfu instead spent the intervening period building his catalog of music, while also getting married, which is a much better use of that time than a lot of folks made. “I tried not to let it phase me,” he says of the pandemic era, and the abrupt restrictions it brought upon him. “I live a pretty normal life here in Canada. I’m just really looking forward to getting started on this tour, because I’ve been waiting for three years!”
As noted above, Powfu has never really performed live, prior to the current tour, which is something that would have been very difficult in the music industry as it existed even just a few years ago. His YouTube channel has 2.3 million subscribers and 61 videos, dating back to “Sanguine Remix” from November 2017. It’s got 132,096 views to date, which oddly ranks it only in the bottom third of his videos, based on view count. 25 of those videos have about a million views or more, and most of them much more. His biggest hit, the dreamily melancholic “death bed (coffee for your head)”, has exactly 504,190,828 views at this writing.
Powfu hit a billion streams just a month ago for “death bed”; he’s already added 259 million more. That one song made him a star almost overnight; “death bed” would later achieve Gold certification in Belgium and Denmark, as well as Platinum status in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, New Zealand and, of course, the United States, where Powfu went 4X Platinum. The song peaked at #23 on the Billboard chart, but its biggest impact was felt on TikTok, which has become a major music influencer, almost by accident. The four million-plus people who used it as background music for their own videos gave a spontaneous testament to the way his music resonates with listeners, who quickly coalesced into a fiercely loyal fanbase.
Any thoughts of him being a one-hit wonder were quickly refuted. Powfu made the most of that attention by making sure that any new fans who discover him will quickly see that there’s a lot of material already issued. Just like time spent browsing in a record store, this keeps them on his pages, more clicks, longer duration–mother’s milk for the algorithms, but it all happens more or less organically. Powfu is one of a number of artists, spanning a wide variety of genres, who have made this transition, kinda seamlessly, even amidst a global pandemic and political instability. Because people just want to have a good time.
His debut album is “Some Boring Love Stories, Pt. 5” (2020), a collection of four EPs of the same series, released in 2018 and 2019. He’s since released two more EPs, “Poems of the Past” (2021) and “Drinking Under the Streetlights”, which just came out on June 4. The bulk of his business, though, has been driven by singles, which is the norm in this streaming-centric market. He released three in 2019, eight in 2020 (including “death bed”), and five so far in 2022. He’s also featured on singles by 11 different artists, including Ouse, who will be opening for him on this tour, along with Snow. (The real boss features are yet to come, but they will come.) His most recent single is “i hate waking up”; the video dropped not even a week ago. He’ll probably like waking up a little bit more this week, because he’s in Florida.
Any musical tour is a complex logistical operation, and newer artists may find it extra challenging, between dealing with venues, making travel and lodging arrangements, making provision for merchandise, dealing with promoters, stage crews and sound techs. “I was actually really shocked at how many people we were taking,” he says, excitedly. “I didn’t think it would be this many people. It’s me and my wife, and like, ten other people. It’s a pretty crammed-up bus, but it’s really cool, though. I’ve never lived in quarters so close to other people, so it’s a big learning experience, but so far I’ve enjoyed it.” Only a Canadian could find the joy in such an experience, but he’s worked damn hard to earn it, so good for him!
https://www.powfuofficial.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/PowfuOfficial