Why do we do what we do? Same as most musicians, we feel that our souls will explode if we don't make our music... but how are we unique? Probably in our "relational" minded approach to the music scene here in St. Louis and in the midwest. One of our main goals, perhaps even a higher priority than making music, is to reach out to other musicians and music lovers and create long-term relationships. We do this by supporting other bands and venues as much as we can... keeping up with the scene on myspace and attending shows on nights we're not performing... really listening to the music of other local bands and buying their CDs. We also volunteer many hours every month to a local cable television show that promotes local bands by making free videos for them. All this while working hard rehearsing or performing 5 and 6 nights a week to make sure we are making the very best music possible.
The name of our band means NEW VISION... doing this music scene thing in a totally new and different way. There are LOTS of good musicians out there making great music. We certainly do our best to be among that lot but that's nothing new. My vision for this music project when we first began in 2004 was to use our place in the music scene to spread a positive message of hope and unity. Things have changed in the live music world so much over the past decade. People don't value live music as much as they used to; they are so distracted by the internet, incredible video games, 500+ channels on their satellite tv's... there is so much more competition for their time than there was a decade or so ago.
So what do we do? Like I said before, we feel that we MUST make our music. So my quest is for us to join together and really listen to each other and support each other. As musicians, WE are the ones who understand the value of live original music. If we don't support each other, who will? Maybe it will be contagious. Maybe our friends will follow us if we lead the way. Who knows. It is only my vision and I've found that preaching about it doesn't do much good. We just have to model it. And so we do. Like the relationships we are working to establish, this vision is very much long term. We've only just begun.