It’s not every day that music industry heavy hitters like Fergie, Natasha Bedingfield, Grateful Dead legend Bob Weir, former MTV host Matt Pinfield and various other multiple award-winning artists, producers and industry executives zero in on judging unsigned music. Local rock trio Red9 currently has the attention of all of these judges and more as it enters the final round of the international John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
The group’s track “All They Reign” has made it through two rounds in the rock category of the annual contest and the group has collected more than $8,000 in prizes, including studio equipment from brands like Roland, Boss, Audio-Technica, Gibson, Epiphone and Propellerhead.
The band was notified on May 1 that it would go up against artists in the 11 other genre categories for the Song of the Year award, which would score Red9 $20,000, an Avid prize pack, a mixer and pair of studio monitors from Mackie, plus a $1,000 scholarship to the Digital Media Academy.
“We found out we won the first round the day before the OC Music Awards in March,” vocalist and bassist Jeff Lyons says. “We knew we had no hope of winning anything at the awards based on the competition, so receiving that was awesome and made everything OK.”
