Ready 4 The Road

Our Ready for the Road Class and Project has been running for a semester and we have so much to share! Take a look at all the neat things we are doing:

Music
We produce cutting-edge, radio-ready music and media that appeals to teenagers because it is produced by teenagers. This year we’ve been in the Studio non-stop to make catchy songs for our PSAs and performances. While we are out at rallies or on tours we’ve been distributing our recent Ready for the Road collection on CD and T-SHIRTS as well. The exciting news is we’ve just assembled a brand new album with thirteen new songs and the popular “Buckle Up” song on it, and are currently distributing it on our website. We’ll be handing out more mp3 cards this year so students and teens across the country can experience these fantastic new tracks. We’ve also had many of our songs played and students interviewed on the local Radio Show, Studio 4 All Access Top 4 Countdown on  96.3 Ktwn. This has helped us to spread our message all over the Twin Cities. 

You can listen to our newest music here: Ready for the Road Music Page

PSA Videos
At the beginning of the Winter we visited our partners at Twin Cities Public Television for a guided project day in their Saint Paul Studios. We got to see their equipment, do some job shadowing, and work with the TPT executives to conceptualize and begin to write professional quality PSAs. They next few months we wrote music and shot videos to match to help get out the message that teens need to be ready for the road the second they get into the car.  TPT is now helping us perfect our material and market our PSAs nation-wide.

Check out two of our strongest videos on Youtube Below.

First: Dominoe Farrar, Mick Boulevard, and Silk Lesure started the Buckle Up fever that is sweeping the nation with an innovative new dance, song, and contest.

You can check out the PSMV (Public Service Music Video) here and see footage from students and performances all over the country.

For other students to get involved with the Buckle Up Video, they can submit themselves doing the Buckle Up Dance and get involved with the nation wide craze!
Learn how to do the new dance thats sweeping the nation the "Buckle Up". Watch Dominoe Ch'Yea for instructions (here) and then post a video of yourself doing the dance for a chance to be a part of the final video.

Submit your videos on FACEBOOK here : FACEBOOK SUBMISSIONS

Second: Another of our strongest PSMVs comes from Molly a veteran star at HSRA.

Filmed in South Dakota, this PSMV describes the pain and loss of Molly’s song Broken as she herself has experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one through a driving accident. Check out the video now and leave us a comment here : BROKEN PSMV

Performances/Rallies
As part of Ready for the Road, we learn to network and expand partnerships while promoting our project. We get to combine our passion for music with service-learning and public safety. We want to put a positive spin on distracted driving by giving responsible driving a cool image. Through peer-to-peer teaching, we want to show teenagers that they have a bright future that shouldn't be cut short because of a distracted driving accidents. While a lot of distracted driving media relies on scare tactics, we want to encourage teenagers that it is cool to be focused on your future, focused on your driving, and Ready4 The Road. In this we combine job experience in education (peer-teaching), media production, and advocacy with discussions, rallies, and performances at schools all across the country. While on the road we direct students to like the State Farm and our Ready 4 the Road Facebook pages, check out our music and videos on our website and on youtube, and sometimes just talk about what distracted driving is and what we as individuals can do to stop it.

This year we’ve spread our message in Chicago, at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, and at Todd County High School in Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in workshops and big shows to hundreds of students. In February we upped the ante in California performing  San Fran, LA, and San Diego on a mega tour bringing our message to thousands of students. We started with three shows and a community panel at the innovative and beautiful High Tech High in San Diego. We brought our message to lucky High School Students at Grammy day at University of South California in LA and developed our recording, marketing, and musical skills under the guidance of professional musicians and producers. We also visited Gertz Ressler High School while in Los Angeles and performed our set for their assembly. Then we went north to Met West in Oakland, did a hip hop workshop at Mercy High in San Fran, spoke and performed for a college panel at University of California at Berkeley, and capped our tour off at Leadership High School in Oakland.

WEBSITE

Students have designed a brand new website and logo to help get our message out in an even stronger format. On the site we have trip logs from some of the rallies and tours we’ve been on, the music students have made, and photographs from all the country. We also have some of our professional PSMVs for all to see.

Check it out here!