How the Nighthawks project was spawned...
So… it’s come to this. You’ve managed to find your way to the site and now you wanna know more about us.
Fair call.
Nighthawks is, in essence, a very simple project. Sure, maybe it was spawned from countless Friday Facebook posts that kept me sane throughout a very trying four year period. But lets not take away from the by-product of that time. Procrastination.
…no, it was really about connection….and some procrastination. But mostly connection.
Lets start at the very beginning [they say its a very good place to start. Or at least Maria does. Thanks Maria].
I grew up with two extremely musical parents. My father played music (nearly every instrument under the sun) for a living via the military and my mother is a classically trained jazz singer who always seemed to be in some kind of band playing pubs and the like. Admittedly I was young and probably had a warped version of how often they were performing in some way or another, but as far as I was concerned they were musicians. Period.
Because of this, I can safely say that my exposure to differing kinds of music was more than the average family’s. From Paul Simon to Stan Getz. From Rogers & Hammerstein to Hall & Oates. From Linda Ronstadt to Dean Martin…and everything in between. I felt as though it was always around me. We even had a dedicated music room which held all their instruments, and there were a lot of instruments. We had all sorts of awesome things to play with. Guitars. Saxophone. Flute. Double Bass. Microphones. Massive 6ft Peavey speakers. (Putting on pretend concerts at our house was epic).
We even had a Fender Rhodes Mark II Keyboard that was heavy as a bastard and would pack up into a portable unit. Hated it then. Love it now. But this room was where my Dad used to spend countless hours practicing his piano scales or writing out pages and pages of sheet music for different parts of an orchestra. I don’t think there have been studies done on what affect hearing repetitive songs from Jesus Christ Superstar does to a child’s brain development, but I would have been the ideal subject…I’m really not kidding here.
As I grow older, I dabbled in different instruments but never really got my head around playing any of them competently. I start a family. Got a job. I’m keep doing artwork as a pastime to make sure I don’t go completely mad during all of this. But somewhere during this time, I remember consciously thinking to myself that I needed more music in my life. If I couldn’t play or sing it myself (FYI, I have terrible voice. I mean I don’t think so, but it seems to be the consensus of anyone who hears it) then I would try and bring it into my life any way I could. Enter 2012.
Back in the early days of 2012 [remember then?], Facebook added the ability to not only have a profile picture, but also to add a cover image to your page. As a graphic designer who had absolutely no desire to have images of myself plastered over the internet in an effort to stand out *shakes head*, I decided that I would create cover images of my favourite musical artists and match the profile picture to my favourite album of that artist.
Not groundbreaking. Not even notable really. And if we’re all completely frank about this, it’s all just first world shit that we get to fill our brains with that at the end of the day doesn’t really make a lick of difference….enter Nighthawks! (Nice positive start there Rugers).
Nowdays, music is probably the most influential factor (outside of actual people…mostly) to my everyday. I sit in front of a computer to make a living and although every part of my being feels as though it’s probably not doing great things for my complexion, its how I earn money. So my music library is very possibly my closest work colleague. It can alter my state of mind, enhance a ‘zone’ that I’m in or even surprise me in a way that will help my work take on an entirely new direction because of the music that comes on. (The power of shuffle is grossly underestimated)
So, after absolutely no consideration or intention to create anything bigger than a pretty picture, up went a cover image of Jeff Buckley. Without boring the shit out of you or your Grandma here, Jeff made a very special impact in my life at a very poignant time in my life. In the profile space I obviously posted a picture of the album ‘Grace’. You can read the story here if you like. But like I said, no biggie. Just something different.
Each Friday afternoon I would change out the header and profile images to a new artist. Slowly but surely, the interactions between me and my online social connections (which are my actual friends…I have a rule about this. If I don’t know you, I’m not connected) every Friday would begin with people chiming in “….Oh I love their music!” and “I can’t believe someone else loves them as much as I do.” Which in some respect is normal FB banter which I passed off as a simple by-product of a few images being posted. And as time progressed, my Capricorn nature began to prevail and I slowly began counting the artists that I’d posted and as a matter of course began writing small blurbs about my experience with each artist.
What this resulted in was something quite beautiful. I learned that communicating my experiences was the spark. The spark to begin connecting to people through a medium that was universal. No, not Facebook…I meant music. Sure, it was via social media which nearly everyone on the planet has some sort of opinion of, but if we bypass the politics of Facebook as a concept and look at the immediate and actual results of it, I was conversing with people I hadn’t contacted in years….and friggen loving it.
After some time, I could nearly guess who would chime in about a certain genre of music. Some people loved sharing their stories of the same artist. Some people would simply like the post and move on. I could never really gauge how many people were actually reading the posts aside from the physical annotations, but like any self propelled anxious douche bag who wonders if any of the people who said they would come to my party via a FB invite would actually come *raises hand*, I realised that it was paralleling real life in which we are all ultimately looking for some kind of validation of anything we put our heart and soul into. (Goddam you universe, lesson learned).
So, I decided I wasn’t going to do this for anyone else but myself. Gauge of success? Follow through. Post every Friday and whatever happens happens. Over time, this small attempt at creating something so as to not post a bullshit photo of me or my kids (My second rule of FB: Never post images of my kids) doing something mundane to uphold the premise of sharing, slowly became something bigger than photo avoidance.
Like most people who trade emotional stocks to varying degrees via an electronic social platform, Facebook for me is kind of like par for the course. I justify being on it as I have a bit to do as a designer for clients via the medium. But really, I spend way too much time on it and continuously battle my inner voice to put my phone down, shut the computer or remind myself not to care about things that really don’t have any bearing on my life. So finding a way to use the platform for something that seemed to encourage positive interactions gave me a sense of satisfaction.
After a time, I began having actual conversations (by this I mean face to face conversations…I know, revolutionary) about an artist or album I had posted at a BBQ or catch up. People seemed genuinely excited about talking about their favourite artist, their first concert or any other piece of trivial information that had been discussed three Fridays ago on a post that they resonated with.
But here’s the kicker. It’s not trivial. The experience of this piece of music to that person is genuine. And that is what its all about. Acknowledging that the emotions and experience that this person has when listening to a specific artist could have been life changing. Or they could have been annoying as hell. Or they have no idea who it is and are really keen to experience something new. This is why I learned to love writing about music so much. Firstly, it was cathartic. There is definitely something healing about writing about your own experiences. But the real impact comes when others relate and share their own.
This is not the first time something like this has been done. Nor will it be the last. But like any great movement, it takes small steps to ensure that the most important things in life are bought to the fore and cherished and we’re massive advocates of creativity and the importance in preserving the integrity of people who have the courage to make it.
So as you make your way through the site, I ask you simply to take all the writing here with a grain of salt and understand the guiding principles of all the reviews on the Nighthawks website:
1/ Only write about good shit (we’re not in this to dump on creative peeps)
2/ Write like you’re talking with your best mate
3/ Be honest, but don’t be an douche bag
4/ Keep perspective…it’s only a website about music.
With those things in mind, we hope you enjoy. Feel free to fly us a message in the contact page about whatevs.
We’re not precious about the site, we just like talking about music.
Keep listening and keep connected.
The Nighthawks.
(aka Mykie Rugers…for now anyway)