An amazing partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sustain Music & Nature, and talented musician Conner Youngblood, has come together to deliver one of the most beautiful Songscapes yet. Youngblood has released the aptly named, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, to the world! The song is moving and incorporates carefully layered bird song recordings taken at the refuge.
Following Youngblood's week long retreat at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, on the northern shores of the Great Salt Lake, he created a song inspired by the landscape and wildlife. We worked with Holler Films to shoot a music video at the Refuge, and are happy to share that with everyone today.
Youngblood, who plays over 30 instruments, created the song entirely by himself. Please head over to Bandcamp to purchase the song. 30% supports the Friends of Bear River MBR, 30% supports us and future Songscapes, and 30% supports Youngblood. Every dollar helps!
This Songscape was especially important one- for Sustain and for public lands. Utah has been host to large political voices calling for the privatization of federal public lands. Trump just recently reduced the size of Bears Ears National Monument, and politicians like Rob Bishop are hungry for turnovers of public lands to state management and natural resource companies. We at Sustain feel strongly that public lands are one of America's best features, and are important to the nation for sustaining wildlife, resources, recreation and sustaining our souls. Bear River MBR is in the ground zero state for public land turnovers, and it's our duty to get people to pay attention to public lands and feel connected to them. If you care about something, you won't let it go.
Songscapes are meant to celebrate public lands, show them off, and to create an emotional connection for audiences through music. Music reaches across all divisions, and affects people in a way that statistics and words don't. We believe that bringing public lands to audiences through music will ensure that people take a stake in their public lands.
We strive to reach massive amounts of people with Songscape songs and music videos; to increase awareness of public lands on as large a scale as possible. As a new nonprofit, this is hard to achieve! We are working to build press and artist connections from the ground up, and this Songscape is our greatest achievement to date. Youngblood has a following of over 40,000 people, which is 4 times larger than bands we've worked with previously. We also partnered with Southwest: The Magazine to present a feature length article in all January 2018 Southwest Airlines flights- a readership of 6.3 million! On top of that, we also had the great fortune of working with Utah Public Radio to develop a radio story about the Songscape. Their network covers most of Utah and southern Idaho!
All in all, we are so happy to share Youngblood's incredible song with everyone. Please take time to listen, purchase, and spread the word!