Sometimes in our drive toward our dreams, we get lost. We lose sight of the why and get stuck in the how. My dream is to one day build a festival larger than Burning Man & EDC all while giving local acts a way to realize theirs. I know what you are thinking a 36-year-old man trying to accomplish the impossible dream, but it's only impossible until someone is crazy enough to do it. EDC and Burning Man started as a dream, an idea. What happened there? Now let's add the actual improbable part. On top of building the largest festival America has ever seen I want to build the venus city based on the Venus Project.
I will go into my reasons for that later. That is not what this post is about. I've been struggling as of late. Trying to hold onto that drive, that energy, that blind naive ambition that comes with working toward your dream. Over the last couple of months, in the struggles of the day to day efforts to simply survive, I have lost it. I have found myself wanting to give up and leave the music industry behind. I even wrote a long Facebook post saying goodbye to the industry. If you have ever worked within the music scene you'll find it not so easy to get out. You'll find an outpour of support and that life without it is dull. There are few things more addictive than a dream. Needless to say, I got pulled back in or I should say I jumped back in. I gained a team from that experience to help me accomplish my dream and my drive started to rekindle. The flint was being struck once more. I still carried an unseen boulder. My new team members were the wood, yet the fire would not take. What I needed was an accelerant. Something to renew my passion to catch fire. Something to remind me why I was doing this.
I run a weekly EDM art show called Bump the Hump here in Salt Lake. It's been growing, but the numbers have not been enough. We needed more people to show up. Tackling a Wednesday night and a Club with a history proved to be difficult, but we had something amazing here. You could feel the positive vide. The energy of something powerful. This could one day be a historically significant part of the Salt Lake EDM music scene and Liberatus Entertainment. We just needed to hold on and keep pushing. After about 3 months and 12 shows, I started to notice a trend. Our openers were bringing out more people than our headliners. It was an interesting trend to witness. When something sparks my interest I need to know the reason why.
I started to theorize what was causing this surprising outcome. I started to pay attention to who was showing up. I noticed that many would leave after seeing the first act. After the DJ was finished many would be hugging and praising them. These were their friends. I also noticed that a few older people would show up. These were parents. I came up with a way to test my theory. January 3rd would prove to be a hard show to bring people out. It was only two days after the New Year and most would be partied out. This was the perfect show as a test.
My theory: New DJs have the ability to pull more on a weekday night because friends and family are more willing to sacrifice sleep than fans are. Everyone wants to support their friend's dream.
The Test: Only book DJs that have never seen a stage.
With this test in mind, I reached out to my friend SAE ALWVYS. We had met at my first rave, DAS 2016, and had been friends since. Not just a festival friend, but a real-world friend. He produced music that spoke directly to your soul and I had been trying to get him to take the stage for the past 8 months. He was currently training at Salt Lake DJ & Production, so I asked him if he knew anyone else that had never seen a stage. He got his friend Sky Child onboard. It just so happened that my other friend posted on Facebook that he was thinking of DJing again. I asked him if he had ever played on a stage other than a house party. He hadn't and the stage was set. The acts SAE ALWVYS, Sky Child & One Blind Owl (which we would accidentally change to Blind Owl with the logo creation, better name anyway LOL).
New DJs and the New Year this show practically named itself "New Beginnings" was now underway. Sadly pre-sale tickets actually came in under that of our typical show. The amount of interested and going numbers were lower. It seemed that my theory may be inaccurate. We continued with the promotion of dreams and making them a reality. DJs starting their careers on our stage. Witnessing the birth of a dream kind of thing. The day of the show arrived. I was excited to see what would come of this test. Everything seemed to be falling behind we ended up opening our doors 10 minutes late, but for the first time ever we had a line at the door at the beginning of the show. The excitement filled the air. We had audio problems given that we had new DJs. We were halfway through the first set when we finally got the subs to kick in. It ended up that I needed to grab a DJ from the crowd to go up on stage and turn the right knob. This did not affect the crowd. I believe they were simply happy to see there friend on stage. This show would turn out to be the most successful Bump the Hump yet. My theory was accurate.
I gained more from this show than just the proof of my theory. I watched as these nervous men took the stage and came alive. They were taking a step toward their dream and their flame was contagious. This turned out to be the accelerant I needed. It reminded me that with an improbable dream the most important thing to do is celebrate every step. That although my dream was still unfulfilled I was still accomplishing more than most. I was giving others hope and fuel for their passion. Their fires filled the club that night and it lit a flame inside me that I will carry on as I continue to take small steps toward my dream and I will not forget to pause for a moment and appreciate each little victory. Funny that I would find my new beginning and the meaning of that term at a show I created. So, raise your glass and let's toast to our ability to reinvent ourselves or to start working toward our dreams once more.
I Love You All