ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — With a warehouse job keeping him busy for a few hours each day, Nick Meadus is not stuck in one place as much as most people are during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, the St. John's musician has nowhere else to be once his workday is done, so when Meadus caught wind of a new RPM Challenge starting up for the month of April, the multi-instrumentalist was fully on board.
"I was looking forward to it, honestly, because with this COVID-19 pandemic and everyone being isolated and the internet blooming in so many different ways … it's been great to know they're pushing that again and getting people to be active and not fall down into a depression and keep the creative mind going."
The RPM Challenge is an annual musical endeavour encouraging participants to record a full album of music in the month of February. Unpossible NL spearheads the project, and that group's executive director, Elling Lien, recently took hold of the reins to co-ordinate the international challenge as well. The original organizers based in New Hampshire stepped aside from those duties following this February's RPM Challenge.
Lien noticed through the month of March there were lots of people online sharing their musical talent while stuck at home.
"Then it was just like, well, to help people find creative, fun, rewarding things to do at home, why not just have another RPM, and it seems like we're going to be home for a long time, so let's just do this all over again," Lien said.
One song or many
Usually, the goal is to create at least 10 songs or 40 minutes of music. However, to make the current iteration of the challenge more inclusive and accessible, musicians are free to create as much or as little music as they like.
"It's still a record production month, but you can do a single, you can do an EP, you can do an LP, or you can do a box set or a whatever," Lien said with a laugh. "It's a flexible goal, because everybody is going through stuff and they have different levels of bandwidth available to them. It just gives people who can get out one song, they can feel a sense of accomplishment. And that's what I want to give people."
He's already aware of some new participants who are specifically on board for this challenge because one song does not seem insurmountable.
"That's really great, because I don't want people to feel discouraged at all," Lien said.
Getting motivated
Meadus is no stranger to the RPM Challenge, having participated multiple times since first giving it a shot in 2016. He took part in the official 2020 RPM Challenge in February, completing a solo ambient-drone project under the name Exit Smile.
"It's kind of like that motivation and fire under your butt to get going and set a deadline with everything," Meadus responded when asked what he likes about the challenge. "It forces you to do it and do it in a timely fashion."
This time around, he's collaborating with friends online for a short EP-length recording of heavy rock songs. Meadus is also working on another solo project combining ambient soundscapes with beats.
"I'm pretty much waiting on a vocal track now," he said with regards to the former project. "I have everything in my basement to record guitars and bass. I'll send that off to the guys and see what they think. Even this past weekend, we pretty much finished a track. … Just been sending files back and forth. Still collaborating, but just not in person."
Separate but social
"Making music together is such a beautiful social thing, and now we're able to do this at a distance," Lien noted, citing Ritchie Perez's coVIDeo Collective project as a great recent example of this.
Perez has united a variety of musicians with ties to the St. John's music scene to record covers accompanied by sharply edited videos that show the participants performing their parts at home.
As of Tuesday, there were just under 100 artists and groups in Newfoundland and Labrador signed up for the April RPM Challenge and 400 worldwide.
Lien said people interested can still sign up between now and the end of the month at rpmchallenge.com.
@CBNAndrew
