Streaming This Weekend: Keep The Dream Alive in July

This weekend kicks off July’s Keep The Dream Alive on Twitch, and it’s the biggest, most proper edition yet! The annual livestreamed event boasts an incredible lineup of artists. KTDA brings together artists of various mediums from all over in order to help raise money for music education in Detroit, via a local non-profit called Seven Mile. From Flamingosis & The Bodega Groove Collective to Sunsquabi, from the legendary ill.Gates to the relentless energy of Levity – this year’s headliners alone showcase a diverse, dynamic range of artists that can also be found throughout the rest of the lineup.

The day schedules were just released along with the complete audio + visual artist pairings for easy viewing. There are so many great pairings and such a curated flow that it’s hard to choose what to be the most hype for on which day! All we know is all three days are filled to the brim with enough vibes for just about anyone to enjoy. There are also tons of donated items to be auctioned off from artists involved on the stream, along with others including official GRiZ merch and even a GA ticket to Big Fam Fest!

The founder of Keep The Dream Alive, Murphy Fuller, had the idea to kick this event off during GRiZ’s hiatus, being that GRiZ is/was one of Seven Mile’s biggest contributors through his annual GRiZMAS events. For Keep The Dream Alive, though, the event has begun to blossom into its own beautiful series with exponential growth thus far leading up to this weekend’s event.

“This one has been a huge breakthrough,” Murphy Fuller told The Synapse. “We have more artists in this stream than we’ve had in all three of the last ones combined, and three times as many visual artists … Hopefully we’re going to get a lot more visibility! We’ve been taken on by several more media outlets this year, and that’s hopefully extended our visibility which is going to increase donations. We have plans to get a 501c3 to allow us to be an official non profit and then our charities are gonna expand beyond just Seven Mile with Detroit.” These developments wouldn’t have been possible with all the legwork that Fuller and his team(s) have put in to help the event grow.

One of the biggest things Murphy attributes the success of the event to, was meeting Jacob Butler (aka LessThan3) at a time when he was left out to dry without a show-runner to actually handle the technical, backend aspects of a live-stream. Butler seems to have hit a super great stride with handling the stream rollouts while handling a myriad of other aspects and problems that arise. Butler clued us into some of the things that make him tick when it comes to KTDA.

“What makes me thrive is being able to bring big and small artists together in an environment that they probably wouldn't be able to do.," Butler told us. "Take Foxx being Paired with Palpa on visuals. That pairing is something that is super unique to the stream because Foxx is a newer artist, and Palpa is such an amazing visual artist, and for them to come together this early in Foxx's career is something so beautiful and unique that i think a lot of people are really going to enjoy when the set goes live. Or when SayWhat?! does anything on the visual side, it's always such a treat. Or finding really REALLY awesome artists like Jerm at random and reaching out to see if they want to be a part of this event.”

Speaking of pairings and 3x more visual artists… this is where neuro.studio has had an exciting series of involvements with the festival! A ton of our partners have been enlisted to help bring visual candy to the party, mixing up and pushing forward Keep The Dream Alive’s inevitable and undeniable visual aspects. A few of which are championing the “Salivating Hours” slots, where there will be some more of the visually stimulating sets that will serve as “late nights’ in a sense. Rick Morrison aka Aw Jeez brought on our own Sterfrii to be lead visual coordinator this year, which has resulted in an even further bonded relationship between both companies. A list of our partners joining in on vj duties are as follows:

Aw Jeez

Bosart

Crystal Beth

Departure

Dough.jo

False Idol (½ of Berry Blotter)

Firecat

Glossolalia

Jacob Roufa (⅓ of Chroma Club)

Liteshift

Neocord

Polygon Rainbow

Synthezist

The Wooked Witch

Visser

VJ Kobra

It’s awesome to see the commonalities and crossovers between some of the fundamental things of both neuro.studio and Keep The Dream Alive, mainly the fact that lockdowns during covid (in tandem with live-streaming taking off), helped give both inspiration to form and grow their wings.

There are a ton more innovative visual creators slotted this weekend. Amongst those is Baxter Long aka phasingfade, a headlining visual artist who grew up amongst the heart of the Pretty Lights Movement. He was paired with MIDIcinal, another Colorado cat who’s been making waves for himself for quite a while now. “I feel fantastic about my set and I’m excited to see how it’s received. Working with MIDIcinal made it easy to piece together something powerful. Fans can expect each song to take a unique direction visually, I did my best to utilize variety to keep it interesting from start to end,” Baxter said of his upcoming set this weekend.

His energy about this event mirrors most everyone that is involved, in that he’s excited to just be involved showcasing his art in any way for a good cause, let alone music education within such a dope event. He recalled his upbringing, remembering that he ”was lucky enough to grow up around a lot of creative energy. I didn’t realize until later in life how special or rare that was. It is incredibly valuable to make resources available to youth for their creative curiosities to be nourished – to contribute to that connection and growth this way is a blessing. It feels special to be a part of something big and so accessible. With so many artists, I know it takes some sort of magic to organize it all and it’s impressive to see so many creative and talented people come together and donate their time to a relatable cause.”

When it comes to that coordinating and delegating – he’s absolutely right. Working around the clock for this team seems to be a common theme, and is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to this event taking off on its biggest iteration yet. Butler gave us some insight into those struggles:

“The hard thing about an event this big is the communication. With trying to do so much on the backend, from promo, to running and operating, to booking, to outreach, or organizing, making set times, making sure everyone's branding on point, it starts to become a lot. And when there is a drop in communication, that process becomes even harder because you just don't have answers for things. On one of the past streams, there was an artist who's set was going to premiere at 9am MST, and I hadn't heard anything for weeks on any progress, and then at 12am MST on that day I received the audio and had to bust out the visuals for that set.”

On the other side, though, Butler has seen the shared sentiments amongst the artists involved. He told us how he “always [has] gotten a rush from doing booking in the past – from finding out someone has signed off on being a part of an event is such a cool feeling. It's like, ‘You wanna do something really cool for kids?" And most of the time, these visual artists and musical artists usually sign off and say, "Heck yeah, what do you need?" Man, that feeling where everyone is on the same page for a really cool event is such an awesome feeling.”

“I think fans should be excited for this whole event. There's so many great genres, so many cool visuals, so many tite pairings. I would say honestly… if there's anyone that doesn't know about the event yet, this is THE weekend to strap in from start to finish. If you don't know any of the smaller names, this is your chance to give them a shot for 30 minutes. If you don't like them, come back in 30 and try again!”

neuro.studio and a lot of our team members will catch you in the Twitch chat, while we’re getting down all weekend long! Stay tuned in and don’t forget to tell your friends.

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