WINCHESTER — Brad Hallen takes out his phone and scrolls through the Facebook advertising campaign designed to promote his band in Brazil — where the Boston-based rock duo known as The Providers has racked up millions of views for its online music videos.
Hallen rattles off stats — impressions, shares, views — and says he writes back personally to commenters on the band’s posts, urging them to share the content more widely. This is all new to Hallen, a 63-year-old bass player with a deep resume and stellar reputation who has been around Boston’s music scene since the late 1970s. With COVID-19 forcing the cancellation of most live music, going social is one way for an independent band to at least get heard in 2020. From his Hyde Park apartment, Hallen’s able to go global.
But maybe just as unusual as the circumstances of the music business in this pandemic year is the unlikely makeup of The Providers. On the surface, it would appear that the two members of this studio outfit would never have connected. Hallen’s decades-long career includes stints with Boston bands such as Pastiche, Adventure Set, and Nervous Eaters, and nationally-known artists like Ministry, Iggy Pop, Aimee Mann, Johnny Winter, Susan Tedeschi, and the late Ric Ocasek of The Cars. He’s played on more than 200 recordings.
Hallen’s partner, Christopher O’Donnell, 39, is chief product officer at Cambridge marketing firm HubSpot. O’Donnell, who has been with HubSpot for nearly a decade, is in charge of product development and user experience at the marketing software company. While Hallen has spent many of his working days onstage, O’Donnell has primarily worked online.
The two men met about 16 years ago when O’Donnell was running a New Hampshire recording studio in a previous career. Hallen came in for a session, and they hit it off. They saw each other again when Hallen showed up as part of the band that ― unbeknownst to him ― was playing O’Donnell’s wedding.
Years later, O’Donnell called Hallen on a whim to ask him to jam on Jimi Hendrix songs. Soon, O’Donnell told Hallen about his original music.
No less than his singing, songwriting, and guitar contributions, O’Donnell’s day job has afforded the band a deep knowledge of how to find an audience.
“These days, the biggest stage really is social media. And artists have to go out and build their own stage,” O’Donnell said. “That can be millions of people.”
Even before COVID-19, The Providers never intended to tour or play live gigs regularly. O’Donnell and Hallen brought in other musicians to flesh out their recordings in studios around the Boston area, and they wouldn’t be able to recreate the sound onstage without more members. But these days, with the right tools, a couple of guys playing part time together can make a name for themselves without touring, radio play, or a record label.
The pandemic has actually played to the band’s strengths. It’s released five songs recorded last year, three of which have more than million views on YouTube. One track, “All I Know,” has been seen 5.5 million times. With more classic rock fans at home and online — like everybody else — The Providers say it was a little bit easier to find their niche.
Another song, “Start to Love,” with a message of unity and equality, has attracted nearly 1 million views since the band released a video last month illustrated with images from the nationwide protests over racial injustice.
“We felt that this song was really viable now, as a message of comfort to the people who actually understand that concept, and, hopefully, a gentle message to the people who don’t understand it,” Hallen said.
Figuring out a niche in today’s diffuse music market is a little easier when you’ve got a mastery of content marketing. O’Donnell’s used some of skills he’s polished at HubSpot to target specific audiences ― even down to individual fans ― based on their age, location and taste in music. The band is also using software tools to make one-on-one connections at scale through platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook.
The result has been a blossoming audience in unlikely places such as Brazil, where there’s a big appetite for the kind of anthemic classic rock that The Providers’ music evokes. “It’s actually been a great test bed for what I do at work,” O’Donnell said.
For now, the project is still primarily a labor of love for O’Donnell and Hallen, who spent a big chunk of his self-imposed pandemic isolation practicing and posting Facebook videos that pay tribute to legendary bass players such as Tommy Cogbill and James Jamerson.
The relatively high volume of listeners The Providers have generated produces some revenue from online platforms ― they take home a slightly bigger cut as independent artists — but it’s not enough to cover the cost of recording and marketing the music. The goal, they said, is to get enough exposure that they can develop a trade in selling merchandise, and potentially licensing their songs.
“It may seem like what I do is different from what Brad does, but particularly when we’re working together it’s really a similar challenge,” O’Donnell said. “It’s getting amazing people into the room and coming up with a shared vision.”
Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com.