STORY TIME

What's up everyone? First of all, thank you guys for being a part of my first month on Patreon! So incredibly grateful for your support. Also, this might be a bit of a long one.

This is Jahan and Yasmine. They are part of electronic music duo Krewella. They hold a special place in my music journey because they were actually 2 of the first bigger names to really give me a chance. I wanted to tell you guys the story about how I linked up with them and the first time I hung out with them.

My old roommate Natalie first showed me Krewella's music back in 2012 when their single Alive was everywhere. I instantly became a huge fan of theirs. Soon after, I did my first 'guitar dubstep' cover of the Pegboard Nerds remix of Alive.  At the time, my graphic designer Greg was also doing graphics for them (I had no idea), and he loved my video enough to share it with their manager Nathan. 

This resulted in me acquiring official stem tracks for some of their songs to create more YouTube videos with. Some of you might remember my cover of Live For The Night I did soon after this. Literally right after I did this song they had a huge falling out with their now-ex member Chris and took a major hiatus. Nothing really ever came of this video.

Years later they released a comeback single called Beggars which I decided to a video for, completely just for fun. The next day I got email from Jahan personally, asking me to play live with them. I was at my day job at the time (I'll tell you more about that another time) and I remember just staring at my phone going HOLY SHIT. I was and still am a huge fanboy at this point. 😂

Honestly it was so cool of them to offer that. They were the first major group in that scene to give a chance and it opened SO many doors for me afterwards. Meeting them for the first time was awesome. They're incredible people who are so welcoming and make you feel very involved.

I played Alive with them on stage that night at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. It was part of their Sweatbox Tour which was all of these super small, intimate venues. It was super badass. 

Afterwards they did an afterparty DJ set at UNIUN in Toronto and guest listed all of my friends to it. They really did not have to do that; it made for a totally kickass and unforgettable night.

What I really took away from them was how doing something like that, to
them, probably seems so small. But to me it was massive. It's truly inspiring when you meet people you look up to and they really live up to being total badasses!

I now have opportunities to work on official guitar covers of their tracks and most likely have something else coming up with them later this year.

I hope to get the opportunity to pay something like that forward to someone else someday!

CR