The same formula that has earned Mitch and his son Dallas Seavey international fame as multiple extreme sport champions of the Iditarod Sled Dog race hopefully will earn Conway Seavey the success he is seeking in the world of contemporary music. The formula according to Dallas and Conway’s brother Danny is the power of family, love, support and dedication to the goal. Last week in an e-mail holiday greeting to friends Conway’s mother Janine expressed her appreciation for having the family all together at Easter. She then announced the link of her youngest son Conway’s newest music video encouraging everyone to take a look and share with their Facebook friends whether they like the genre or not.
With the same loyal enthusiasm that she awaits her family’s arrival in Nome, Janine Seavey was supporting Conway’s dream. Over the last few year’s Conway has sung at community events like Progress Days and has been heard at Kaladi Bros and other local venues. Almost without exception you’ll find Mitch and Janine helping Conway set up equipment just like he helped in the work of training championship sled dogs. A couple of days after Janine Seavey’s email Conway’s video had over 4,000 hits. “What we did was go through Soldotna making beats from what we call ‘found sounds’ I started beating on a dumpster which made my baseline, then I found a sign and started beating on that, but I had to run after the construction manager came and found us beating on his sign,” laughed Conway in an interview with the Dispatch, “then I made a beat on a chain link fence and we kept going until we had this whole rhythm section made then we walked back through Soldotna along the Sterling Highway and played the song to that beat as we made the video,” he explained.
From the roof of Pizza Boys with the DQ sign in the background to the Walgreen’s construction site and dumpsters in-between residents will recognize their routes through the River City as Conway sings the cover song of Maroon 5’s hit “Payphone.” Accompanying Conway on his romp through familiar Soldotna sites is Alaskan born Delana Duncan, who directs for the Triumvirate Theatre and teaches voice and piano in the local area. “Delana is a great friend of mine and John Taylor, who filmed the video. She’s an amazing singer and actress but we really just friends,” said Seavey. While the video is a cover song, Conway did ad an original rap composition to his found sound rhythms, “What makes a cover song cool is when you take a song that everybody loves and then you add your own twist to it so not only is the beat original but I wrote the rap. And what I find hilarious is how my parents and grandparents like that part the best. I wrote it at 2:00am in the morning of the day we went out to film, but then forgot it the next morning and had to re-learn it,” he said.
The video can be seen now at http://www.conwayseavey.com/payphone.html and Conway hopes Soldotna’s dumpster will go viral globally, “It’s obviously our goal and no matter what generation you’re from music hasn’t changed that much really. The concept is the same somebody writes a song that people like and you share it with your friends and they share it with theirs and pretty soon its Beatle mania. It’s exciting for me to see all the support and great feedback we’ve gotten already on the production and we hope it keeps increasing and will be first to reach Nome,” said Seavey. You can find dates of where Conway Seavey will be playing locally on his Facebook page.
