Great news -our first follow-up single to “Decibels” is almost here! “The Medic” will be released worldwide this Thursday. Special thanks to our global release partner Revival.FM (Scotland) and our U.S. release partner WJTL FM!
Light45 is honored to be ringing in the New Year at the Kahler Hotel in Rochester, MN. This will be THE biggest New Year’s Even party in Rochester, MN! Discounted hotel prices are available, and tickets are now on sale!
https://www.tickettailor.com/checkout/view-event/id/131531/chk/ae56/ref/ken-q-light-45
The Richard Rawlings show “Rehab Garage” used over a minute of our song “Steeped” in an episode that aired last week (and is still airing as of press time). The song appeared at 28:34 in Season 1, Episode 2 “Westside Hotrods” (at the beginning of the “Day 5” segment). It ran for 1 minute and 16 seconds.
As thrilled as we are to get our second song in a network tv show (the first was “Bringing You Back to Life” in A&E’s show “Born this Way”), we are even MORE thrilled that our fans are the ones telling us when they hear our music. Our fans are die hard, and this is just a treat that we can all enjoy together. Thank you again, Jason, for reaching out and telling us you heard us!
To you, fans, we dedicate this appearance. Rock on!
How about this awesomeness?!?
The way radio works, you get to determine which song, and when you want to release it to radio. It’s kind of a way to bring some order and reporting to an industry that could be very random otherwise. You basically say “we would like radio stations to add this song on this date”. But if they do or not is up to them. And there is a lot of competition. So we are thrilled that our third radio release has been picked up by enough stations that it has made the Top 30 chart.
Thank you, God, for so many people enjoying the music. And for giving it to us in the first place.
And thank you all for listening, requesting, and playing our music.
Super proud of this music video. We wanted imagery that would accurately represent the summer, top-down feel of the song, while giving a glimpse behind the scenes and a bit more into our personalities. Enjoy!
The most ambitious project we have ever attempted. Months of preparation, set building, location scouting, and over 3,000 miles logged taking a set to a little known desert in Oregon. (Quite a ways for us Minnesota men!)
We are absolutely thrilled with the result. Ladies and gentlemen – the official music video for “The Maze”.
We have been BUSY! 🙂 This post will try to catch everyone up.
Our second single “The Maze” was released a few weeks ago. It has been steadily climbing the Christian rock chart. We are PUMPED at how well we have been received in this crazy industry.
We also signed some video sync deals with networks such as A&E, Discovery, MTV Road Rules, and many more! What this means is that they know of, and have access to our music to use in their shows. So if you hear a Light45 song in your favorite show, let us know! 🙂
We are getting ready for our most ambitious music video yet. We are building a set, and will be taking a road trip to an undisclosed desert location, thousands of miles away. This will be AMAZING, friends! We will live-stream much of it, and continually post updates to both Facebook and our YouTube channel.
Finally, we launched our subscription service! This is something we are extremely proud of, and we will create a separate post soon just on this topic. Our goal is to create a community where we actually are hanging out with our fans, and getting a small amount on a monthly basis to fund these insane industry costs in the meantime. So we are giving away home shows, merchandise, hang out times (movies, tour bus spots, etc), opportunities to serve with us in ministry, and more! It’s all for only $1.50 a month, which you won’t even notice being gone. But it really, truly will launch us as a mega band. Thank you for checking it out!
Talk to you all soon!
Justin.
*Note: If the website music player is playing over this video, you can click the music not on the bottom right, and then click “pause”.
The Rochester Experience just did a feature on Light45. They came out and shot an interview during a break on the set of the music video for Steeped. A seriously cool piece. We love independent video.
On August 1, 2016 we released our first music video on Facebook. 24 hours later it had nearly 5,000 views. We have continually been blown away by how well received our music and art has been. Embedded below you will find the YouTube link (FB link with original count is in the YouTube Comments) to this video.
Note: If the music player on our website is playing over top of the video, you can pause it by clicking the music notes on the bottom right of the site, and then hitting the pause button.
Steeped is a song about escaping from a prison. The prison is sin. And the light (Jesus) is what sets us free. In this video, the prison is symbolically represented with the cage made of crates, and the pain of the world, past, and our own mistakes is represented by the children that poke, prod, and generally torment Critter.
We are very proud of this. We hope you enjoy it!
So now what? lol. As an independent band, it is sometimes hard to think about what to do next. We are sincerely humbled and thankful to God for the stations playing “Steeped” around the country right now, and to the fans and team members who made it possible. Here is a cool Google map we put together to help us visualize our current radio play.
We have decided that this will be a good opportunity to give something back, and test out some home concerts. We’ll make a separate post for it, but be prepared to sign up for one of 3 house parties that we will do, for only the price of passing the hat. Details to follow! 🙂
Justin.
Yesterday in the morning I got a text from our manager Ken with just one line. “#5!!!!”
He can’t be talking about the chart, I thought. After all, we were #28 last week, and #27 the week before.
Then he sent the following image.
So, yeah. We did a happy dance! 🙂
We love, love, love this business. And we uber-love our fans. Even better things are coming, friends. Please keep in touch.
Justin.
Exciting times for Light45 these last few weeks. Our first radio single, “Steeped”, is starting to get some national play. We have, at last count, been added to 3 stations in addition to our local KNLW. These stations are in Reno NV, Santa Clara CA, and St. Charles, MO. Because of this, we got on our first Billboard chart! It’s a small one called “most added” for the Christian rock world. But it was cool to see our name up there with some of the big boys. 🙂
The first of many such charts, God willing.
Ladies and gentlemen, we couldn’t be more pleased to present to you the sweat of our brow, “Decibels”. This is our debut EP. Every song was painstakingly produced to give you maximum enjoyment for years to come.
You can listen and purchase here.
We told you it would be worth the wait. 🙂
So we are back from Nashville – I’ll post more of our exploits there in a different post. I just wanted to give a quick update on the songs.
In short – they sound INCREDIBLE!!! Seriously – you’re going to flip!!
We have all 5 in a nearly final mixed state, and Skidd is committed to seeing them through to being perfect.
Thanks for hanging in there with us. It will be worth it. 🙂
October 13, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Justin Hawley, (507) 202-0715, justin@light45.com
Rochester, MN local rock band Light45 will be recording with Grammy award winning producer Skidd Mills for their first professional audio recordings.
“I was able to get some examples of our music to Skidd through a friend in the industry,” said Justin Hawley, lead-singer and guitarist for Light45. “He listened to it, and decided to work with us. It’s an opportunity 99.9% of bands never get, and one we have dreamed about as a band since we started.”
Light45 will be recording on historic “Music Row” in Nashville for two weeks in November.
“Our goal is quality over quantity. We would rather have Skidd take one song and put us on the map than 10 songs that are average quality. Skidd believes we can get 4-5 songs completed, though.”
These songs will be combined with locally recorded content to complete Light45’s first full-length album since the band’s creation, and released in the following months.
Light45 will be live-streaming parts of the trip over the Periscope app, blogging it on their website, and interacting in real time with their facebook subscribers.
Light45 is accepting donations to fund the project on their website, light45.com.
For more information, follow Light45 on Facebook at www.facebook.com/light45music
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Wow. What a concert! Possibly our best yet. 200+ people, and the opportunity to open for Disciple and Decyfer Down.
Really an amazing time, and we can’t thank you all enough for coming out. Especially great to see the guys from Rochester Teen Challenge.
Here a few photos from the event if you missed it.
Hey all! We have played festivals, but this is the first time we are the sole opening act for a major headlining tour. We are proud to open for Disciple and Decyfer Down on May 23 at Hope Summit Church in Rochester, MN. This will be a truly incredible concert. High energy, good old-fashioned face-ripping rock for the glory of Jesus. We are completely excited for this, and will play nothing but our best songs, better than we have ever played them before, including a new never-before-heard rock song that is currently the band’s favorite.
Rock on.
We recently had a “That Thing You Do” moment. KNLW 98.9 FM in Rochester, MN put our demo for “Too Beautiful” into rotation.
Here is a fun video of Justin enjoying the moment.
You may notice some spotty blog posts over the last few years. Yes, we are still active and playing! Here’s a few important tidbits…
I once had a preacher tell me that while things may look dead, it’s just winter. All of the trees were very much alive. It was just a season.
We understand the importance of seasons. And spring is here. Both for our neck of the woods, and for Light45.
It’s going to be a powerfully awesome year!
It seems like every show is better than the last. We played a show last night where we shortened our set because my amp kept blowing the power in the place and I had to use 3 Pill Morning’s Mesa Boogie amp instead. Regardless, it was arguably the best show we’ve done yet.
There is a fun progression to watch in ourselves as well as other bands. It seems either a band starts with great music or a dynamic live show, and then the other one suffers- at least at first. With us, we have always focused on writing great music. Some would say to our detriment, but ultimately, it’s the recorded version of a song we want you to be able to eventually have. And that all starts with songwriting.
But for us that meant our live show needed to be caught up for a truly great balanced live set. Recently, we’ve really been getting’ it. Part of it is because we know the music better now, but I think an even bigger part is that we are practicing with the live audience in mind now. At least I am. Mark hasn’t really had an issue with a good live show- he moves like a deranged Gumby onstage and it looks great. But I personally have had to work on it a bit. The good news is that when you practice with the live show in mind, as we now have the ability to do, when you actually play live the “coolness” just comes out naturally.
It seems our fan base is increasing rapidly as well. Sort of neat to see those numbers climb.
Anyway, time to go. Peace to you and yours.