We caught up with the brilliant and insightful BJ & Jeff a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

BJ & Jeff, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning the craft was difficult, and took a long time to hone in. There were a few things that we already had experience in, which was a bonus. We had both been performing music for years, so we were already familiar with (and enjoy) that end of things. Also, both of us have an active history of recording and producing music in a studio, but we had never put recording and live performance in the same spot before. (band meets DJ).

The main issue was was that since this is only a two-piece band, there’s a great deal of blank spaces to fill in. Putting it together and presenting it as a complete package was something new to us. We knew what we wanted to do, and had a very general idea on how to do it. but there was a lot of trial and error. We break down every song and figure out how we’re going to juggle everything, and do our best to make it a little bit different but still nice and full.

The interesting thing is that in addition to contracted events, we perform club dates as well, meaning that we need to have the catalogue of a typical cover band or DJ. That’s usually around 3 hours. This meant that we needed to figure out how to do this process with over 50 songs, all of which have their own unique instrumentation and voicing. It was important to us to make sure everything sounded like it belonged together, no matter how different the source material was.

And that’s just the sound, next was the lights!

BJ & Jeff, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Our first idea was to create a band of two people who sounded like a full band with a stage show that competed with anything you would see in an arena show. This really put in motion the idea that in this day and age, with the speed of information, and the incredible amount of content available these days, we needed focus on the event as a whole instead of treating this as a traditional band.

The Neon Electric Space is the destination created by the music and performance. We play songs that you know and love with an updated sound, some fun remixes, and a fantastic light show to bring the whole experience together. Additionally, we have Neon Electric Avenue, a large merchandise bazaar where we do swag giveaways, merchandise sales, and we are working with local artisans to provide multiple vendors at each show.

Our goal is to create a space at that’s completely audience focused. We don’t want people leaving saying that they saw a great band, we want them to leave saying that they had a great time visiting the Neon Electric Space.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

It took us 2 years to iron this out. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and had no idea how long it would take us. Also once we had a general idea of what was needed, the workload seemed monumental. We both went through moments of wanting to drop it and musically go back to what we knew. Luckily when that happened it would only happen to one of us at a time. The other person would then talk about how awesome the final vision is, and we’d be back in business.

Now we have a couple more amazing people helping behind the scenes who bring a lot of motivation when we’re feeling overwhelmed.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Simply follow the artists that you like, and share that art with others.

Also, make sure you tell the artist that you like their work! People may be surprised that a lot of artists really like to engage with their supporters and fans. Staying connected allows us to get real time feedback from our most important customers!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.neonelectric.space
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_neon_electric_space/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neonelectricspace/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@The_Neon_Electric_Space
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_neon_electric_space

Image Credits
Photos by Lexie Nause and Ryan Schwab