Coming out of the pandemic created a time of uncertainty and unease for a lot of people and especially musicians. Dayton supergroup The Luv Locz Experiment took things into their own hands to help spread their message of positivity and healing.
"I think the message in the music that we carry really played a part into what was needed at that particular time. So it became almost a demand. A lot of musicians couldn't find work, we actually found more work than I think we were intending on getting. It was all rallies and just different festivals that were created out of that time. And since then it's been an uphill thing and just finding our niche, and also recognizing where the need was for the kind of music that we do." said band leader and vocalist JayVez Hicks.
The band has seen the central message of their music continue to resonate with audiences well after the isolation of the pandemic.
"It has been so beautiful being able to gather people together just with the essence of one love. And it's been so exciting to find different passions that just kind of grew out of one passion. I think collectively, like the first passion was like music, we love music, but the healing aspect of music is really what we loved and it helps pull us together and keep us together. Then we find ourselves in these different elements and modalities of healing arts altogether as a collective." said Natural Onyx.
While COVID may have halted and then altered the music scene in Dayton, it also created an opportunity for growth.
"Collaboration is at an all time high in the city. So everybody's looking to work with everybody. I'll credit the pandemic to that because prior I think everybody was on their own way, trying to create their own thing. But it really just made us see ourselves and a scene where anybody can catch this thing. It's a great time to be a musician or artist in Dayton because of the collaboration over competition attitude that a lot of groups are taking. So kudos to Dayton." said Hicks.
