The Rockdoves, a.k.a. NYC singer/songwriters Daniel Cole and Kim West, have been writing and performing music together for over seven years. The RocketHub Team is friends and fans of this duo and was excited to have their project “From The Birds” as one of our true pioneer projects of our site. After a successful crowdfunding campaign - their idea is now a reality...and this 'cool kids record' made with parents in mind is being released into the world.

We had the chance to catch up with Daniel and Kim to talk about their success with crowdfunding and chat about their creative process.

How does it feel to be on the "other end" of your RocketHub campaign - now that you have recorded the Rockdoves "From The Birds" album? Any insights on how crowdfunding the record beforehand shaped the creative process?

Crowdfunding our record got us so exited about our project, and really brought energy into our creative process. During our RH campaign, we still had a few songs left to write for the record, and it was an amazing feeling to know that what we were writing was soon going to take shape in the studio. There was a wonderful immediacy to everything we were doing, from coming up with our RH videos, posting them and getting responses, to just the lovely sense of possibility we felt in seeing our community of supporters grow and contribute to help us do this recording. We were thrilled to see our goal coming to fruition day by day, and when it seemed like we hadn't seen any fuel coming in for a while, we were exited and inspired to spice up our project page and generate some more interest. So it kept us on our toes, and invested in our work, and the creativity flowed naturally from there.   

Tell us a little bit about your songwriting process - I know you two collaborate on lyrics and music - what is the writing flow like? What are the challenges of writing for children but keeping the adults entertained, too?

Either one of us will bring a framework for a song to the other and we'll work together to add input and ideas, or sometimes we'll just be playing around with a melodic line, and then a song theme and lyrics will basically pop up. Usually we know the song is going to be pretty good when we're laughing hysterically during the work-shopping phase. We're not exactly sure how, but magically we've been blessed to be able to bridge the gap and write cool kids' music that adults also enjoy. We knew there was a huge niche for music that could be enjoyed by families together, and it was our vision to create music like this, but we weren't calculating during the writing and didn't overthink anything. We just followed our hearts and let the Muse guide us.  

Nice! - what is the feedback you have been getting from the kids and parents from the shows?

We are delighted to say that we have been getting absolutely wonderful feedback from kids and parents!! We did a show last week and were floored to look out at the audience during the first song and see both little and big people singing along! We've been told that our songs are "dangerously catchy" and were pleased about that to say the least. It's seems that we've been able to truly make the music we wanted to make, and that our work not only connects with kids and adults, but also has the potential to actually bring them together, even by giving them something fun and cool to sing along to as a family. We are deeply grateful to RocketHub for the platform and the opportunity to accomplish our dream.  

Thank you so much for the good words! RocketHub is happy to have played a part. Where can folks buy the album online?

Our album, "From the Birds", is available on our website, www.therockdovesnyc.com. Folks can email us directly for a signed copy, they can purchase a copy of the CD at CDBaby.com, and the album is available for download at iTunes, Amazon.com, and Digstation.com.

Mahalo!

-Brian