Before starting The Hiigh Low – who on earth starts a blog in 2020? – I made music. A lot of it. Over a decade+ it really added up. With new music on the way for the first time in years I’m looking back on the past, and changing the path of the future with a new alias.
I put together a playlist of my best music – 10 years in 60 minutes – The Best of Vision the Kid . And at the same time, I’m changing my name.
Some background.
I’ve been away from music for a long time. It’s actually the longest I’ve stopped making music since I started writing in High School.
But this Friday I have a new song coming out I’m excited about, and a new project this summer.
I’ve been through a lot – changed a lot – since I paused on music a couple years ago, and even moreso since I started my solo work over a decade ago and added “the Kid” to my name.
(Hard to believe I measure my life in decades now, but as my wife says, “it’s better than the alternative!”)
With the new music coming out and the aforementioned passage of time, it felt like a good time to change my name (to Jordy Skywalker).
I still remember choosing the name “Vision” when I started making music and performing my spoken word pieces in High School.
Short, poetic names like “Vision”, or “Chosen”, or “Truth” were kind of the thing in those Saul Williams-wannabe days of my youth.
Anyways, I was 14 or 15 or 16 and I couldn’t think of a name. It felt like a very important decision, a name. I have to chose a new name? I don’t think I’m qualified. I’m not even sure I can do it, legally.
I remember having the thought that my name “should probably come to me in a vision. Oh shit, Vision.”
That was it.
That was the teenage logic that decided my name for the next – shuffles papers in preparation of snitching on himself – 2 decades.
And so as I am 1) set to release some new music for the first time in years and 2) changing my performance name I thought I would take some time to look back at the music I made; the music I wrote through the valleys and peaks of my late-20s. The music that put me on stage at nearly every music venue in the Twin Cities. The music that led to late nights writing, performing, and most importantly, celebrating with the support of friends and the team who became a second family, Be Easy.
And I’m not gonna lie, my music is good.
Honestly, condensed down – 10 years, 1 hour – is kind of the perfect way to hear it (though I’ll never steer anyone away from listening to all 3 EPs and 2 LPs on Spotify, or the 3 additional mixtapes on soundcloud.)
An Aged Rapper Looks Back Wistfully
I’ve written and recorded more music with Ryan “Tru” Truax than any other person I’ve known. We grew musically together since the first day we collabed in his Southside Minneapolis bungalow. I literally would not be who I am as a musician without him, and his support and enthusiasm means the world to me.
I‘m amazed by what Freez (DeShawn Freez Richard) of Illuminous 3 did on “The Beat Goes On” from my EP BrokenRadioLove. His support for me – putting me on stage at his release show at the Icehouse, always saying what’s up at shows, always, when I saw him at least, radiating positivity – was something I have always really valued and appreciated. Freez’s Frozen Frency Freys – with production from Mike Frey – was probably my favorite local mixtape of that decade. I wore that CD out in my old little honda.
I’m still in awe of Medium Zach‘s verse on “Lift Off” – it gets better every time I come back to it – and sharing a stage with him to rock it at Honey (rest in peace) is one of my favorite memories of Honey, a venue that was arguably the most important, public musical space of my life.
On my last album I got to rap on beats by Lazerbeak, Big Cats, O-D, Medium Zach, Klassik, Noam the Drummer, Yung Nab, 40 Mil, and riding with me as always, Ryan “Tru” Truax.
It was a dream come true of a producer lineup and though I didn’t promote it as I should’ve – I’ve never been good at self-promotion and a pandemic is a hell of a drug – I think The Jordy Skywalker Project is my most complete work.
All Justyn Dow‘s support and features throughout the years have given me life.
I mean, I actually got to open up for Culture Cry on a packed weekend night at The Fineline. (Making music and videos with that top-notch band – and the support and friendship of Mike Daly are chapters I will never forget.)
I headlined my own show at 7th Street Entry and got Taj Raj to play on several tracks. If Be Easy were my brothers Taj Raj were my musical cousins.
I co-shot, directed, edited, and starred in over half a dozen music videos with Colin Kopp, not to mention the show and album art we made with Jay “more white space” Austin, a designer with skills so dope MinnPost ran an op-ed declaring his sticker of Vision the Kid as the “reigning champion” in Minneapolis in 2015.
“Vision the Kid,” it reads. No URL, no email, no copyright or trademark or other visual fluff. Just an iconic image.
MinnPost
The art, the adventures…
Andre Mariette‘s support and partnership – he brought me on the road, basically dragging my non-salesman ass along – took me to stages and spare beds in Iowa, Missouri, Chicago.
I once crowd surfed – yes, to my own music while I was performing it – at G Daddy BBC’s. That place holds a thousand memories. I once threw up before a show (nerves…mostly) and they were going to kick me out (they had a strict “no puking” policy I quickly learned) but I told them I was the lead singer of the headlining band (The Hot Box, my brothers) and they let me stay!
I packed Honey to it’s low hanging rafters on multiple occassions, rocking the photo booth and one time painting on stage that started the most absurd, ultimately failed, bidding war I’ve ever witnessed. I think I speak for most Minneapolis musicians from the time when I saw we love you, Jon.
The Uptowner was the the place Nirvana played when they first came through Minneapolis. I played there just a year or so before it closed.
I recorded an EP in the same studio as Nirvana recorded In Utero, Live recorded Throwing Copper.
The Dinkytowner!? Get out of here. Nomad. Triple Rock. The Caboose. 7th St. Fineline. Aster Cafe. I played them all.
I’m not gloating.
If any of this sounds like a flex, great. It feels to me more like a small time rapper in a small market town.
But that’s a description – the kind of overly quantitative focus you would expect from a hyper-capitalistic society – that doesn’t sum me up, or sum up any of the musicians who played on any of those stages, chasing dreams and a buzz in the late late nights of a 21st Century American city, it’s big bridges a twinkling backdrop.
I write all this to remember those elusive glory days Springsteen sung about the year of my birth, sure. But it’s not just to remember the songs, or the stages, or the people in all those places, but to remind myself that our dreams are more than our streams (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
Our successes are not in our numbers, fellow local musicians. They are not in our investments recouped.
Our successes are every memory we could wring out of a sweaty summer night, every performance where we left it all out on the stage, every flame of dream we burned candles to chase, every cigarette bummed, laugh shared, playlist edited, sound man consulted with. Every moment we put ourselves out there, trying to touch others with our music, was a success. Every note we cracked with emotion, every connection we forged in the dank dark of midnight bars. All the love and energy that we helped to funnel, to condense, into those musical spaces, was a success. All the art that begat art is our success, and it is limitless, innumerable.