We had the great pleasure of getting to interview the humble Nelly Joy and Jason Reeves of High Dive Heart. Read our questions & their answers below. You can follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
BTS: Introduce yourself.
NJ: Hi, I’m Nelly Joy.
JR: I’m Jason Reeves, and we are High Dive Heart.
BTS: You two are from completely different areas and have been a part of other projects before High Dive Heart. How did you two meet and decide to pursue this project together?
NJ: We actually met in 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. Jason was living in L.A. at the time and I was living in Nashville and I was his first co-write, so we started writing music together. About two years later after we were friends for a long time we started dating and then we got married. We were married for a good year before we even started High Dive Heart. We were a writing team, writing for other artists together. About a year into our marriage, our friend Nathan Chapman — who produces for like, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban — he was like, “Why don’t you guys do this together, as a pop band?” and we were like, “Oh! Okay, sure, why not?”
BTS: How did you guys come up with your name, “High Dive Heart”?
JR: Well, I wanted to come up with a name that would capture our whole mission that we stand for, and I started writing down a bunch of crazy combinations on a piece of paper and “High Dive Heart” was one of them. After I got about 50 or so written down, I gave it to one of my friends and very fast, she took the piece of paper and chose that name. Nelly liked it and it really does kind of represent what we stand for, so we chose it.
BTS: What music would you say influences you?
NJ: We listen to everything; one band I really love is Coldplay; we’re actually going to see Coldplay live this Tuesday [7/19]. My favorite album, which just came out, is by Jon Bellion.
JR: We really try to listen to as much music and as many kinds of music as we possibly can.
BTS: You just released a music video for your new song “Misfit”. What message do you hope to send out with this video?
NJ: We came together with The Bully Project to launch the single and music video so we’re really hoping that together, we can encourage people to love and accept everyone and to just stop bullying and start loving. We just want people to learn to love themselves and who they are and to embrace being different because that’s what makes you beautiful.
JR: We teamed up with Corey Maison for the first video and we had this incredible opportunity for her to tell her story through our song and we thought that would be a really cool way to introduce the song to people. We have a couple other videos like that where people are kind of telling their stories and standing up to bullying and all of that was leading up to this official video that just came out. We’re really excited to have multiple pieces of content around the song and we really think it’s just the beginning.
NJ: Corey is a really brave, beautiful young lady. It was great to get to know her and we got to know her and her family; her mom is also incredible. It takes such strong parents to let your child be what they want to be. I thought people would really dig the song but I had no idea it would reach so far; people all over the world are viewing it, I’ve seen a German subtitle one, a Spanish one, and it’s making its way around the world.
BTS: Your new EP HDH VS. MTR comes out later this summer. How would you describe it to people who have never heard your music before?
NJ: For people that have heard our music before, they’re going to realize that it’s a bit more of a growth on the production side, and sonically it’s a lot more edgy and poppy. For the people that haven’t heard it before, I would hope they would walk away with lots of high energy, feeling inspired by our lyrics and wanting to dance.
JR: We want our music to be full of life, that’s my goal.
BTS: What was the process of writing and recording HDH VS. MTR like?
NJ: The first song we wrote is called “Playground”, it’s actually coming out next. We worked with Morgan Taylor Reid and we loved how the production came back, it was incredible. The process of writing that song – it started with Jason playing a guitar riff and then I started rambling, wishing that someday I could wake up and just be back on a playground; I don’t like responsibilities. From there, we just started writing a song about that and I feel like that’s how it’s been with every song we’ve written with Morgan; it starts from a real place, something we can really relate to, subject matter-wise, and we just kind of jam.
BTS: What are your hopes or aspirations for the future of your career? Where do you see yourselves in 5 years?
NJ: Our goal is to play for as many people in the world as possible, whether that’s on the radio or through the internet. My dream is to be able to play for tons of people who can sing the words back to me.
BTS: What else do you think people should know about you guys & your music?
JR: Because we’re married and make music together, that’s kind of the roots of where all our songs come from; all of the music we make is real, we want it to mean something and say something. We want to inspire people to be alive and to love each other and to treat each other with respect; we want to inspire people to dance, jump around, be happy and feel something. That’s why music is magical, it has the ability to move people in as many different ways as possible – and we just want to be a part of that.
BTS: What’s your current obsession song?
JR: “Woke the F*** Up” – Jon Bellion
NJ: “Kids These Days” – Jillian Jacqueline
BTS: What was the first concert you went to?
NJ: Death Cab for Cutie.
BTS: Who was the first artist you really loved?
NJ: Michael Jackson
JR: Same for me.
BTS: What was the first song you ever wrote like?
NJ: My first song I ever wrote was pretty bad, it was something really lame and cheesy and bland, called “I Need You”.
JR: I can’t remember what the first song I ever wrote was like, at all. I’m sure it was pretty lame, but I think I wrote it in Minnesota at a summer camp.
BTS: What is your favorite part of being musicians?
NJ: I love being able to express how I feel through music. It allows us the opportunity to speak and get really important messages out there.
Be sure to pick up High Dive Heart’s new single “Misfit”, on iTunes now. Their EP “HDH vs. MTR” will be out later this summer.
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