Reign Lee & Melissa Cox on Swoop’s World Radio Primetime
Reign Lee
Tonight, Thursday April 7, 2011 at 4pm/PST our guest are musicians Reign Lee & Melissa Cox. The two independent artists have joined together and hit the road on The Odometer Destroyer Tour. Tune in check out their music and learn about their great tour.
Touring as a solo independent artist is expensive. Rising gas prices, the shaky economy, and closing music venues make it hard for indie musicians to plan, fund, and profit from touring.
When Reign Lee and Melissa Cox, two independent singer/songwriters living on opposite sides of the world, met in Fall 2009, they formed a unique friendship bound by music, and a business partnership that would eventually lead them to plan a tandem tour of the southwest United States.
“Reign wanted to tour the U.S., and so did I, so instead of competing with each other, we decided to join forces,” says Cox.
Melissa Cox
By combining their resources, income, and efforts, the two award-winning songstresses were able to lower costs and plan a successful tour without breaking the bank.
Reign Lee, who lives in Hong Kong, met Melissa, who currently resides in Denver, in 2009. The two women became fast friends, thanks to their similar musical tastes and styles, and their shared attitude that music is a business.
That friendship grew into a partnership when the two singers planned a tandem tour through five states Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada between April 9 and 24, 2011.
“There is so much competition in the music business and especially between female musicians,” Cox says. “We felt it would be more productive and beneficial to both of us if we worked together.”
The tour, dubbed the Odometer Destroyer Tour due to the sheer number of miles the two artists will cover collectively (roughly 10,000 over the course of 3 weeks), was made possible by donations contributed by the artists fans through Kickstarter.com, an online fundraising service for musicians and artists to raise money for creative projects. Over 50 contributors donated to the tour in return for prizes such as mp3s, cds, and more.
Reign Lee, a Chinese Canadian, tours Asia, the United States and the UK extensively. She is the #1 Hong Kong alternative artist on Reverbnation.com, one of the largest musician websites in the world. An Independent Music Award nominee, her songs have been featured worldwide by Microsoft and Reverbnation, and recently she signed a global distribution deal with Blue Pie Records. Reign won the International Free Ride Song Contest, and received Honor Awards in the 11th and 12th Annual Unisong International Songwriting Contest, and the the Top Finalist honor in the 2007 Great American Song Contest.
Delaware native turned Denver transplant Melissa Cox has shared the stage with the Spin Doctors, Sister Hazel, Three Dog Night, Tom Chapin, Catie Curtis, and many others. In 2008 she was voted one of the Best Musical Folk Artists in the U.S. by the DDOA / National Endowment of the Arts. In 2006, her song elijah, elijah was a finalist in the National Song of the Year Contest. Melissa, who is also the lead singer of national Celtic rock band Mythica, has appeared at hundreds of the largest Celtic, Folk and World festivals in the country.
The singers’ success is just one example of how the indie music revolution is fueled by fan support and a true “do it yourself” mentality and work ethic, without record label backing.
“It’s the grassroots effort and the generosity of our fans that make this tour possible,” Lee says. “That’s what music is all about: community.”
Reign Lee
Alternative artist Reign Lee possesses a lyrical, dynamic style that has firmly established her as a singer-songwriter with an edge. With a list of influences as diverse as Patti Smith, the Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Aimee Mann, the Cars, and the Arcade Fire, Reign has carved out her own brand of what it means to be alternative.
Melissa Cox
Take the poetic lyricism of Paul Simon, mix in the vocal timbre of Grace Slick, and throw in the unbridled power of Tori Amos, and you have Melissa Cox. Melissa blends metaphorical, storytelling, and poetic writing styles with her unique musical elixir of rock, New Folk, progressive & World, tying it all together with her classically-trained vocals, guitar & mandolin playing.
