We caught up with the brilliant and insightful East of June a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

East of June, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Each of us has had quite a different path in life and through the power of the universe you could say, we’ve all come together to focus on this one goal of developing our music and being the best band we can be. That being said, we’ve had to support ourselves financially via ‘regular jobs’ over the years while working on building the band. Singer, Emily, has held many customer service jobs in restaurants, coffee shops, event services etc. while constantly pursuing music.

Kyle Mortensen (guitarist) owns the creative agency NEWSCIENCE whose clients include Live Nation, Universal Music Group, and Sega, and has held an eclectic array of music-related jobs. He is also a co-founder and Creative Director of the web3 company GRIPNR, which is bringing tabletop roleplaying games to the blockchain. He is the former Vice President of Marketing for StreetWise, the digital agency owned by David “Beno” Benveniste, manager for System Of A Down, Deftones, Korn, Alice in Chains, and others. He also ran marketing at URB Magazine and managed such artists as legendary rapper Slimkid3 (formerly of The Pharcyde) and industrial rock band Kidneythieves.

And Dirk Lance, co-founder of INCUBUS, co-wrote and performed on the band’s biggest hits, including “Drive,” “Pardon Me” and “Wish You Were Here,” and spent the last decade on a passion project called Willie’s Nerve Clinic among other independent endeavors.

Overall, no matter what jobs each of us has had in the past and currently, our love for music has driven us in a way that nothing else can. In Emily’s opinion, “I’ve definitely thought about what I would do if I didn’t pursue music many times in my life and it always comes down to the fact that nothing else speaks to me like music does. To be creative, I believe, is what keeps our imaginations alive and gives us a unique type of freedom within our minds.”

East of June, 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 band consists of Emily Rath (singer), Kyle Mortensen (Guitar), and Dirk Lance (Bass). Despite their intended premise, online dating apps aren’t always conduits for meaningful personal connection. But when Kyle came across Emily’s musical portfolio via her profile on the dating app Bumble one day, he decided to bypass the idea of asking for a date and instead inquired about a musical collaboration.

The timing was fortuitous: Kyle was separately asking his long-time friend since high school, Dirk Lance for feedback on music he had been working on.

Dirk started sharing his two cents which then began developing into a collaboration without a face to it. They basically started forming a behind-the-scenes songwriting collective. Then Kyle made the connection with Emily and she started contributing lyrics and melodies to some existing ideas they had put together. We then realized that we might instead be forming a band and settled on the name East of June.

Five years later, we now have a catalog of 11 singles, a 5-song EP released in 2021 called “Omens & Signs”, as well as two live EPs — “Live in Studio Five” and “Live at EastWest” — the latter featuring Hoobastank’s Dan Estrin on rhythm guitar. But it was a handful of viral moments on TikTok in the fall of 2021 that caught the attention of a music executive at Richard Branson’s Virgin Voyages cruise line. Virgin Voyages reached out and asked if we’d like to be the featured band for a two-week run of shows in the Bahamas and we ended up playing 9 shows in 14 days which gave us an opportunity to fine-tune our live performance and we had a blast doing so. But more importantly, it got us thinking about the bigger picture of this band and where we wanted to be in a year’s time. As soon as we got back to LA we decided to hit pause on playing more shows so that we could focus on writing a new record.

Over the last 2 years, we’ve been writing, developing and fine tuning 9 songs for the album, releasing the first single “HUNTER” in March 2023. Since then we’ve released two more, “RETURN TO THE WATER” and “PARASITE.” According to Lance, “These songs represent the best writing I’ve done in my career. I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve created. Both Kyle and Emily have reached a new level with their craft.”

We’re all very excited to release the rest of the album very soon and we’ve now started performing shows again featuring the new music. Our upcoming shows for the rest of the year so far include: Nov. 10th at The Viper Room and Dec. 21st at El Cid. We were also just on KLOS radio Oct. 20th for the Heidi & Frank morning show to promote our 4th single release from the album entitled, “TEXAS GIRL.

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

These days we are incredibly inundated with so much content, videos, music, etc. so sometimes it’s hard to really stand out amongst all the noise. But if you dig an artist, the best way to support them is follow all their socials, join their mailing list, follow their music streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, etc) and most of all come to the live shows! The live performances and merch are where artists can actually make some money since streaming doesn’t provide much of an income unless you have millions of people listening every day. And most of all if you love something, spread the word!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The whole journey of being an artist has its challenges and rewards along the way, but we’d likely all agree that hearing the finished product of the songs we’ve all created together and put so much time, energy and effort into is really one of those incredibly satisfying moments we love relishing. Plus, the feeling we get after delivering a killer live show and knowing we just performed our asses off and people had a blast – that’s what it’s about. Creativity feeds the soul in a way that many other aspects in life just can’t.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eastofjunemusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eastofjune/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eastofjunemusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/eastofjunemusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/eastofjune