Meet John Pokrifcsak | Lead singer/songwriter for Shady Vally

We had the good fortune of connecting with John Pokrifcsak and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi John, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
Repetition leads to success. Repetition also leads to boredom. Both are exactly what you want to happen. I (John Pokrifcsak) aim to write a song and to practice my craft every day. I get better and better, polishing up on what I’m working on, and then I get bored. To cure my boredom I add little nuances or expand upon what I have polished up so well. This is what makes the legends great: adding layers and layers upon their already impressive skills until it’s so nuanced and built upon that it separates them from others.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
We are a band from Arlington, Texas who has been together for about 2 years now. We’ve released 3 songs and are releasing a 4th in April. Our first song was “Lovesick” recorded for $0, and released under our drummers name Jud Good (our previous band name). We had only been together for 2 months, and before those 2 months the band had never picked up their instruments. Though this was the case, the song ended up receiving over 80,000 streams and lots of support! It seemed so easy at the time, but our luck didn’t last long. We faced many problems and many realizations of how hard it truly is to succeed in the music business. We never had a manager or much guidance and had to find our way through things on our own – just 4 high school kids with no background in the industry. Right after facing this realization, COVID hit. Before we had a chance to even showcase our music live, everything closed down. It was hard sticking together when we had nothing to really look forward to, but we did. We took advantage of the lockdown, and practiced almost every day, honing in on our craft. When COVID calmed down, we were able to come out into the public; playing at many venues improving our live performance and recording 2 more songs. Through all of this we learned to stick together with nothing going our way as well as understand each other on a much deeper level. We started off as a classic rock band but are transitioning into primarily indie rock, which give off beachy vibes and little sprinkles of jazz, though we are very diverse in what we play.

As of now, we are still gigging and releasing a song called “Sunkissed” on April 15th which you should definitely check out!! If you enjoy our music, support would be much appreciated because as of right now, we will be separating for good in August due to some of us going to college.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Some of our favorite places in the Arlington area include: Grease Monkey, J. Gilligans, The Catch. and Scooters Bar and Grill. Places we eat the most are Sunny Thai, JR’s grill (Pantego), and Jay Jay Cafe.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are definitely people along the way that have helped us to get where we are now – we’d like to give a shoutout to our producer Aaron Payton (@ptsAaron on Instagram), Walter Watson (from the band Double Ace), Bruce Tinch (played based in the band The Clique) and the band Lance Battallion.

Website: www.shadyvally.com

Instagram: @shadyvallyband

Image Credits
Shady Vally