Go out into the world every day with the intention to be kind, comforting, and supportive. In doing so, not only do you begin to help rewrite the programming of others with whom you interact, but yourself as well. As I truly feel this is how we change our story, one act of LOVE at a time. Just like when you author a story it is written one word at a time or a better analogy, just like foundations are laid one brick at a time.
As a part of our series about stars who are making an important social impact, I had the pleasure of interviewing Soul Twin Messiah..
Soul Twin Messiah is a heart-centered rock band based in northern California. Evan Gary Hirsch and Kip Baldwin mesh diverse musical influences from classic rock to new wave with thought-provoking and uplifting lyrics to raise consciousness and inspire action rooted in LOVE. The Soul Twin Messiah debut album is due April 12, 2024.
Thank you so much for joining us on this interview series. Can you share with us the backstory that led you to this career path?
Evan Gary Hirsch (EGH): I’ve been a rock music fan since age six, including playing cassette boomboxes and air guitars all over the elementary school campus daily, introducing the other kids to AC/DC, KISS, and UFO. After a year of violin and a year of saxophone in school, neither of which captured my interest, I finally picked up the electric guitar at age 16, but my first band was not for another 13 years when I joined Armagetiton. After we disbanded for good in 2006, I started working on my solo music. When my partner died in 2012, I became a part time philanthropist and part time jet-setter. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign of 2016 settled me down on home turf and consumed my attention and donation capacity, and I wanted to do more to infuse a love message into his campaign and get him elected to arguably the most recognized platform in the world. I met Kip Baldwin that year after he was referred to me to handle production for my documentation of the campaign. When Bernie lost, Kip and I wanted to parlay our energies into discovering and documenting world changing ideas and helping our human family get onto a more nurturing and sustainable path. Ultimately, this led us to discover each other’s musical talents, and we started making music together. Co-producing the Peace in the Park festival in San Francisco gave us the impetus to prepare a concert set and write original tunes to perform. Ultimately, that led us to record over three albums worth of songs and write the story for our stage play Greta, the Rock Musical. We just released our debut single “Comfort You” on 9/11/23, and have much, much more coming on its heels. In the process, I also found another producer to help me develop my solo material, and now have an album and an EP ready to release as well.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Kip Baldwin (KB): I don’t really see anything as a mistake, as that would mean I have an expectation of things being something other than what they are or were. So rather than judging things as something having gone wrong (a mistake) I accept them as the perfect experience I was meant to have for me to be what I was meant to be. Making the funniest mistake is a hard question for me to answer. So instead let me give you an example of what I am talking about as it pertains to moving beyond ego’s fear based judgment and expectation and into the absolute acceptance of LOVE, where even our “hardships” can help us grow when we do. A while back we were getting ready to release our first single and perform a live show to celebrate the occasion. I lost my voice completely, which has never happened to me before. I will admit at first I was pretty freaked out, but soon I started looking for tools to heal the voice, which led me to certain techniques and exercises that have made me a much better singer. Had I not lost my voice or if I had let the fear of losing my voice overwhelm me, I would never have found these amazing tools, and would have missed that unique opportunity to grow as a vocalist.
What would you advise a young person who wants to emulate your success?
EGH: Clearly, playing music is a social game. In fact, most anything worth doing, and certainly anything that is going to make a significant difference in the world, requires the collaborative efforts of many people with many different skill sets, knowledge bases, networks, and resources. So my advice is to develop your social skills, amass a vast network of talented, resourceful people with whom you can collaborate, set goals together, and pursue them with all of the bandwidth you have available beyond what it takes to make your life work. Get good enough at your instrument or skill in order to bolster your credibility so you are respected for it, and therefore in demand. The rest will work itself out in due course if you are tenacious in pursuing your purpose. And since we only live once, it seems worth it to do it purposefully.
Is there a person that made a profound impact on your life? Can you share a story?
KB: The person who has had a profound impact on my life, and who I actually had the honor and privilege of spending time with before he passed, was Jacque Fresco, co-founder of The Venus Project. But rather than share a story let me share one of Jacque’s most powerful quotes which speaks directly to moving from expectations to acceptance. “It’s your own expectations that hurt you, not the world you live in. Whatever happens in the world is real. What you think should happen is not real. So people are hurt by their expectations. You know, you’re not disappointed by the world, you are disappointed by your own projections.”
How are you using your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share with us the meaningful or exciting causes you’re working on right now?
EGH: All of our music and the various media we create, whether short films, documentaries, or shows, are driven by our positions on how to change the world we live in and the inspiration to take those actions. All we want to promote and manifest with our intentions is goodness, so our goal is to point our human family in the direction of evolving our thinking, our approach, and therefore our world. The most meaningful and worthy causes I am aware of currently are The Venus Project and One Community Global. These are truly world-changing organizations who understand that the fundamental operating system we employ to rule our world is severely flawed when it comes to nurturing us and providing the tools and resources for a sustainable future. So options are being presented, whether a total world systems overhaul like The Venus Project, or a more grass roots DIY approach like One Community, and we should listen carefully to these with an open mind so we can think outside of the proverbial box and start making some significant and worthy change happen.
Can you share with us a story behind why you chose to take up this particular cause?
KB: The path I have been on was not a choice, but a calling that all began with an out of body experience I had when I was twelve that took me beyond the Universe and face to face with Infinity itself. Having said that, it wasn’t until much later that I understood what my spontaneous awakening (that is what I have come to understand my out of body experience was) called me to do, the sharing the Ultimate Truth of LOVE’S Supreme Reality. Because I became aware in my early forties that Infinity was synonymous with LOVE, God, Brahman or whatever one wishes to name the eternally unknowable, undefinable that is the source of all Creation, and that LOVE is not one thing that is separate from us, but is in fact what we Are.
Can you share with us a story about a person who was impacted by your cause?
EGH: Regarding the cause of The Venus Project, one person who has been directly impacted by our support is Roxanne Meadows, who is a co-founder and the current guiding force behind the organization. When we released our documentary about The Venus Project, I sponsored a matching grant campaign to raise funds for them to capitalize off the hype of the new film being released. I offered up to $50,000, and they met the goal, therefore netting the organization $100,000. As it turned out, they had been engaging a realtor to value the property, as they were going to be forced to sell it due to lack of funds. This single campaign literally saved their beautiful 21 acre property from having to be sold. Given all the development they had done there, along with the notoriety of people wanting to come visit the iconic venue, this was a lot more valuable to them than just the land alone. This was quite fulfilling to have been the catalyst for such a profound impact on what I feel is one of the most important organizations I am aware of in the world.
Are there three things or are there things that individuals, society, or the government can do to support you in this effort?
KB:
- Admit we are all programmed by the system to live in a constant state of fear. Once you do that you begin to shift your perspective from the selfishness and fear of ego, to the selflessness and courage of LOVE.
- Recognize that we are all one (we can’t be) and that what we do to the other we do to ourselves. Understand and accept that this oneness is not just a spiritual understanding, but a scientific fact now proven by quantum physics, which literally states that we are made up of subatomic particles that are connected across infinite distances of space and time, affecting one another instantaneously. Think of it as the cosmic butterfly effect.
- Go out into the world every day with the intention to be kind, comforting, and supportive. In doing so, not only do you begin to help rewrite the programming of others with whom you interact, but yourself as well. As I truly feel this is how we change our story, one act of LOVE at a time. Just like when you author a story it is written one word at a time or a better analogy, just like foundations are laid one brick at a time.
Why do you think music in particular has the power to create social change and create a positive impact on humanity?
EGH: We are a species who clearly are driven by combining sound, vibration, and movement, as we can see throughout history as far back as we are aware. Think tribal chants and dances around the fire. It’s a major way we experience the world and culture and bond with one another, as well as simply occupy our time and attention. Music is very often playing in the background as the soundtrack to our lives. So receiving powerful, meaningful, and significant messages through this medium is a very effective way at reaching us emotionally, tying these experiences to memories, and firing off powerful synapses in the brain to galvanize the messaging to drive our future actions. When we sing and reference the music, it serves to further deepen the impact on our psyches. When we share it with others, we celebrate the way music makes us feel, and it tightens our bonds with one another. This could certainly be a viable path toward changing our world for the better in a significant enough way to have a profound and lasting impact.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started”
KB:
- To quote James Baldwin, “LOVE has never been a very popular movement”
- Understand how deeply programmed we all truly are, myself included
- That everyone is here to play a role in story, and that it is only ego that believes we have the power to control anyone or anything
- That the values of LOVE and those of our current story, that only values profit, are not in any way compatible
- How important it is to be able to step outside your comfort zone and into the unknown, no matter how frightening that may be
You’re people of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
EGH: The movement would definitely be centered around LOVE, the all caps kind. A core component would be about self-awareness, self-regulation, and making conscious choices for how and what we communicate and what actions we take centered around a value system we choose up front. It would also include a significant element that “Living is doing, so what are we doing and why”, since in every single heartbeat of our lives we are “doing” something. The heart of the movement would be to acknowledge that often what we are doing in any given communication or action is not serving our intended values, and that these tendencies have been passed on from generation to generation for millennia. So the movement would be about a fresh start for us all and a reboot of our global operating system focused on how to more equitably, healthily, and sustainably accomplish the extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and waste management of everything we use in our lives, and how to treat one another in such a way that cooperation, collaboration, and harmony could thrive.
Can you please give us your favorite life lesson quote? And can you explain how that was relevant in your life?
KB: Our egos are illusions, what we are not, and LOVE is Reality, what we Are. This understanding drives me on a daily basis to let go more and more of ego and its limitations, and become more deeply grounded in the limitlessness of LOVE I Am and All truly Are.
We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
BOTH: Everything that we have described in this interview represents our spiritual understandings, our worldviews, and our ideas for how to help our human family evolve forward in a way that is more conscious, more values driven, and more sustainable, and therefore truly worthy of all our individual and collective efforts to accomplish. We would love to share these with anyone who has the opportunity to make an impact and help inspire and instigate the type of change that we see as necessary to make a significant enough impact in the world to be worth our collective effort. A breakfast or lunch would be the perfect relaxed setting in which to discuss where they feel their efforts fall on a continuum of worthiness to futility, and how closely they align with the values they feel deep in their hearts and what will honestly create a better future for future generations including their own kids and grandkids. Some examples of prominent figures in a few key areas would include philanthropists like MacKenzie Scott, Julia Koch, George Soros, Gordon Moore, Michael Bloomberg, Steve Ballmer, Bill and Melinda Gates; business leaders such as Warren Buffett, Jeff Besos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Larry Elison, Michael Dell, and Charles Koch; political/national leaders including Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and Narendra Modi; religious/spiritual leaders for example Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Rick Warren, Dr. James Dobson, Pastor Joel Osteen, Ronnie Floyd, and Bishop T.D. Jakes; media personalities/entertainers for instance Oprah Winfrey, Mr. Beast, Tucker Carlson, David Attenborough, Bill Nye, Jimmy Fallon, and Steven Colbert; and authors e.g. Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Salman Rushdie, Michael Pollan, Richard Dawkins, Malcolm Gladwell, and Elizabeth Kolbert.
Thank you so much for these amazing insights. This was so inspiring, and we wish you continued success!
Music Stars Making a Social Impact: Why & How Soul Twin Messiah Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.