Today we’d like to introduce you to Kami Rayne.
Kami, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am the lead singer/songwriter in a rock n roll band called DANTE HH originally from Colombia, South America. Being independent, obviously entails that I am more than just a songwriter/singer.
Along with my friends from the band we’ve had to become our own managers, producers/video directors, booking agents and more. When we lived in Colombia we felt that our road of opportunities had ended: we never found a proper audience for what we were doing, and every step was like pulling teeth. Things just didn’t flow. But we kept getting attention from the US, blogs would review us, people would ask us when we were gonna tour over here.
After six years of just working with few victories, we started contemplating our move to Los Angeles. It would mean getting an artist visa which would be expensive and planning a proper move, a complete change of life. It would mean sacrificing the commodities and luxuries we enjoyed at home.
To us, Art has always been our calling, we see it as something sacred which we’d do anything to be able to keep doing it. After much considering, we decided that was gonna be what we would do. It was gonna be difficult, and it would be a leap of faith as well. But we concluded that if we didn’t do this, our band would not survive.
A year and a half ago we sold everything we had in Colombia and moved to Los Angeles not really knowing what would happen but trusting that everything would flow in our favor despite how many hardships we would have to face.
From the start we had challenges, but those challenges were always met with quick solutions as if the universe was giving us a hand, a pat on the back and telling us to keep going.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I think it has been a combination of both. It was a challenge from the start, the biggest one we’ve ever faced. We had to organize ourselves really well and be methodical so that the stuff we’d face wouldn’t be so difficult to deal with.
When we first got to LA, we had sold everything we had so we had money to survive while we got our stuff going, but we didn’t count on the fact that without any credit history nobody would rent us a car, rent us a place to stay. Our original bass player got tired and left, so we couldn’t play without a bass player, so we had to find a new one.
Despite these problems, every time we thought there was no way out somebody would come along and help us when we told them our story. We feel that it’s been actually a communal effort from both the city and us that made this work.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about DANTE HH – what should we know?
We consider ourselves Artists. Yes, we use rock n roll as one of our mediums to express our ideas. But we also use video, shortfalls, comics, even our flyers to express our ideas.
In music, we combine many genres within our genre as we believe that postmodernism has stripped rock n roll from its revolutionary power. We feel it’s time to put it back together with everything that was left behind.
We feel Art is a spiritual thing and an artist is the closest thing to a shaman in the modern world. We feel Art should connect other human beings, communicate heart to heart, mind to mind and combat loneliness. We strive to create songs and stories that represent our inner struggles.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
We have a long list of friends and advocates that have kept us alive. We grew up amongst childhood friends whom all became artists in their own right. Since being in a band has always been our dream, they all supported us always in many ways.
For instance, our childhood friend Jorge Jaramillo became a filmmaker and directed our first videos. He moved to Los Angeles as well and when we decided to come he helped us in more ways than can be enumerated we even show a new video recently, the first one we’ve ever done in LA shot by him. The producer of our first album Sylvia Massy was responsible for us getting our artist visa as she advocated who we were from the very beginning.
She introduced us to Abigail Loso who helped us booking our first gigs and first tours as well. Our Lawyer Neal Datta believed in our plight as well. When we got to Los Angeles, there were several people who helped us: James Hurst let us stay at his house while we got a new place long after our Airbnb had expired with him, Sam Allahverdian from IMX helped us buy our van.
A guy named Tony, lead singer of the band The Rocketz saw us live and introduced us to bar owners, bands and even helped us get new shows. Without him, we wouldn’t have entered a lot of the music scenes of the underground of Los Angeles. The many bands we’ve played with have encouraged us to keep going, have believed in us, introduced us to others, and such.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dantehh.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: dantehellhounds
- Facebook: DANTE HH
- Twitter: dantehellhounds
Image Credit:
Miguel ‘Spooky’ Mejia, Robert Chickering, Cesar Krrillo
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