Thank you for your time today. Please share with our readers the latest news of Reverend Doctor!
Absolutely! I just released my second single “Dance Warrior” in August of this year. It’s a pretty triumphant achievement for me because I was also on the road the most I’ve ever been, played the most shows I’ve ever played, moved to LA from Minneapolis, MN, and did it all without losing my mind. It took a lot of discipline and I actually had more planned, but I did it and no one died. I call that a win!
What have been your greatest achievements in 2019?
Greatest? Aside from the single-releases, it’s been to be able to take the act on the road and find that people have connected with Reverend Doctor more than they have any other single project I’ve been a part of. It was crazy for me to travel all over, but now I’ve got people begging me to come back—that’s a great feeling and it tells me that I’m on to something with the positive affect that Reverend Doctor has on people and communities.
Where are you headed for 2020?
I’ve got a lot planned! My EP “Build It Up” is going to drop. I’m trying to focus a lot more on festivals and further sow the seeds of the positivity of Reverend Doctor. I moved to LA because I want to collaborate more with other songwriters and I’ve already connected with several creative people in the area. LA has this INCREDIBLE collaborative culture. They recognize that no one artist, act, promoter, etc. is an island so everyone is always trying to figure out what everyone else is up to.
Please tell us about your latest musical releases and the music you are currently working on as well.
“Dance Warrior” is a song I actually started writing 15 or so years ago when I first picked up a guitar. I had a guitar riff but never had any lyrics or melody I felt connected to it emotionally. For Reverend Doctor I wanted to write a song about dance as an act of protest and happened to uncover the gem that became the musical tag of Dance Warrior.
What is more annoying to someone that wishes to see you fail than to face adversity and have nothing but joy in your heart?
Happiness is conditional. Joy is a choice we make with purpose expressed through our actions. I think of Maya Angelou’s “I know why the caged bird sings”. Dance is an act we can make to express our decision of joy much like putting a song of defiance in our hearts and singing it through our cage.
The decision to chose joy is not easy. In fact the song says “I dance to survive”. I think this message is so essential right now as our freedoms are continually being rolled back and power is consolidated whether on an interpersonal level or international level. It’s my small attempt to give people personal life-hacks to access their own purpose.
The Build it Up EP, to be released in the spring of 2020, is all about tackling this idea of remaining positive in a negative world, that joy, community, compassion, should never be based on circumstance, because the circumstance will never be ideal. Heavy themes to explore through music, but I trust in the emotional gravity that music creates to ground listeners to a truth they can come to for themselves.
What do you think makes for a great concert or musical performance?
Wow. You might as well have asked “what makes good art?” How about I answer the question “How do I connect to live performances?” For me it’s musicians that are clearly experiencing the music alongside me.
People are really critical of artists because there’s all this pressure for the live show to sound like the recording. So there are a lot of backing tracks and there’s a lot of autotune, especially in pop music. All the technical details of a show can bog down a performance. But I look at artists like Gallant and Jack Garratt who are doing the exact same things: performing to backing tracks. But they are ever-present, reactive, they read the energy of a room, add their own, and perform. I think this is only possible through an emotional connection to the music: all the songs are completely theirs, and they’ve rehearsed the technical details until they don’t have to think they can just be as well as react to the crowd. I think this takes a lot of practice and the ability to shake off the redundancy (of all the rehearsals) and play the music like it’s your first time, every time.
This is probably the reason I connect with so many different kinds of music: if a musician can show me their passion I am there for that!
What have been some of your favorite shows to attend?
Oh man. Is it weird I want to say BTS? I saw them in Chicago for my 5 year wedding anniversary and I have no regrets. They put so much energy (and sweat) on the stage, it’s clear that they may be part of a massive machine, but nobody works that hard for something they don’t love and believe in.
Every time Glenn Hansard is through I try to see him. He is the epitome of an artist that is completely present in his performance.
I had the pleasure of seeing Boyz II Men perform with the Minnesota Orchestra. I was probably the only masculine-presenting person in the throng of adoring fans at the front of the stage. But Wanye touched my hand. Worth it.
I got to see Diana Ross for my mom’s birthday. Watching my mom become a kid again and hearing Diana, and watching her move throughout the stage. Breathtaking.
Haim. Those girls get some credit, but not enough because they rock a stage hard and don’t make any apologies for it. I can think of nothing more attractive.
I watched Stevie Wonder perform at Prince’s memorial concert in St. Paul. Hearing him do a duet with the Purple One on Purple Rain was an important moment for me. I’m not saying I cried, but I absolutely did.
I have quite a few more, but I’ll leave it at that.
What have been some of your favorite performances?
One of my favorite shows was one of the lowest-attended I’ve ever performed. I was playing for a small college just outside Pittsburgh, PA and it was only a week or two after the synagogue attack in which 11 people were killed in a mass shooting. I was performing in a pretty big auditorium for a student that had organized the event and a small group of her friends.
Nothing went right—the sound system cut out, the organizer was nervous and apologetic that so few people had shown.
Eventually I ended up sitting on the edge of the stage along with another student that loved to sing. I taught them a song that will be my next single and it’s literally called “Better Together”. We sang unplugged, I asked them how they were feeling and we had this very intimate, vulnerable moment. The students shared how the community felt. They were mourning for the loss of life, but the students were also angry—the shooters attitudes were not their own and they were uncertain how to show it.
So we all put our arms around each other and shouted the song “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers into an empty auditorium, just myself and about 10 other students. I won’t forget the candor, the grief, the connectedness we all felt in that space for the rest of my life. There was a moment of calm and catharsis. I go there every once in a while in my mind, just to remind myself why I’m a musician.
Where can we follow you on line?
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/_reverenddoctor/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/revdrmusic
FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/revdrmusic/
URL: https://reverenddoctormusic.com
Anything else you would like to share with our readers?
It’s crazy out there in the world. If you do one thing: learn to love yourself. I don’t mean self-care (though that is important!) I mean true, unabashed, unapologetic self-love. Your knobby knees, your tendency to be weird in group settings, whatever it is. It’s all part of your charm and what makes you YOU. It’s the first step on the path to peace, and to the ability to endure a world that feels at times like it’s gone mad.
End of Interview