We were lucky to catch up with Jason Mindus recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jason, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us 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.

I learned how to dj when I was 12 years old and started doing parties in middle school. I had a radio show in college and started to do events and nightclubs, and then I moved to Los Angeles after college. I have always balanced a full time job with all of my creative pursuits to fund the journey. I am not sure if there is anything I could of done to speed up the learning process because it is immersive and you are around so many talented people that you learn through osmosis and create your own style. As far as the most essentials skills, I think for me it’s always been passion, drive, focus, and work ethic along with communication skills. The biggest obstacle is that the music industry has always been insular until the advent of streaming and social media which has opened up the flood gates, but in the process has dramatically shortened the attention span of consumers. Some other obstacles include overwhelming choices, too many platforms, and no gate keepers. So it’s kind of. paradox in my opinion.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I along with my production partner Andre Henderson formed a music production team called SkyRock project which is named after the street where I grew up. I have always been in or around the music industry on some level since I was in college. Around 12 years ago, I really sort of dropped out of the scene, and then I started doing a show on Dash Radio here in Los Angeles which reconnected me to some of the artists and scene that I knew from the 90’s. One night while at a dinner party, I casually started a conversation with Andre about music and we both discovered that we had been dj’s since we were teens and started talking about making music. After a few months of continued conversations, he challenged me to start putting out some music before the summer of 2020. Since I had some relationships that I built with artists through my radio show and the shutdown of the pandemic, it presented a great opportunity to start producing music. Since then Andre and I have built quite a catalog and worked with a handful of singers and rappers covering the genres of dance, hip hop, pop, and R&B music. Our goal is to be behind the scenes – we do not see ourselves as front facing artists, but rather shaping the sounds and developing artists.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

You have to constantly challenge yourself and battle doubting yourself. If you don’t doubt yourself at times, I believe you can become complacent, and by challenging yourself, you uncover new methods, work flows, and processes to stretch out your creativity. It is easy to do something you already know, but it’s much harder to develop new styles.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I am not sure. NFT’s are like crypto currency in some ways. There’s a lot of upside, because it’s intangible, it is hard for the average person to grasp it like tangible goods. Only time will tell and the market will decide.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skyrockproject/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkyrockProject
• Other: Spotify – SkyRock Project

Image Credits
Jason Mindus, Andre Henderson, Chris “The Glove” Taylor