Editor’s Note: It was a fantastic time interviewing rising recording artist Devin Kirtz for Madness To Creation. His single “Hennessy” features Quincey, who is the biological son of Sean “P Diddy” Combs. As I learned about him, he used to play professional soccer for the New York Red Bulls, and he had a residency in Las Vegas. Devin is certainly an artist to watch for in 2020 and beyond. Devin also discussed mental health awareness and coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. Fans can find Devin Kirtz at the following locations:
https://twitter.com/devinkirtz
Madness To Creation: Hey Devin, how are you holding up these days?
Devin: Hello, thanks for having me on here! It’s been crazy times for sure, I got a new moped, so that’s been a liberating experience being out on my moped.
Madness To Creation: You’ve released the music video for “Hennessy” featuring Quincey, can you take us into that song?
Devin: Yeah man, it was great working with Quincey, his vision and he’s one of the nicest guys to work with. I wrote it at a time when I was feeling alone and I started feeling shitty. Yeah it was kind of bringing me back to when I was in Cabo(San Lucas), and I was on that trip and just loved it, and so I just started writing it right away.
Madness To Creation: With this Covid-19 pandemic, have you had to make any adjustments to your social media accounts?
Devin: For sure! It’s crazy, there’s all this oversaturation, there’s so much more posting and people going live, so it’s definitely been a thing to figure out how to navigate how to be seen and heard through all of the noise, so it’s been a challenge on how to be more creative and with videos. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video with Quincey, but he did this cool video where it had all of these pictures with just the lyrics on a piece of paper and we had these cool pictures of us in the studio playing and his photographer photoshopped all of the lyrics that we actually wrote for the song over all of these pictures, so we’ve just been trying to be a little creative with it, so yeah that’s what it is.
Madness To Creation: For sure! What were a couple of memories that you have of Quincey working in the studio with him?
Devin: He is super creative, like he has visions for what he likes and I appreciate that, I appreciate it when people are not sure on their ideas, and he has this vision and he’s ready to go, and he’s one of the super nicest persons of all-time, so I really have nothing but nice things to say about him, I loved working with him for sure.
Madness To Creation: What’s the first thing you want to do when this Covid-19 pandemic passes?
Devin: Honestly, just little things like hug my mom, literally just the little things and obviously playing shows, I miss doing the little things that we took for granted.
Madness To Creation: You’ve played professional soccer for the New York Red Bulls and now you’re this recording artist that’s on the rise. How is the mindset similar between being a professional athlete and being a recording artist?
Devin: That’s a good question. I know that music is creative, but it’s also really competitive, so it’s strangely similar in a lot of ways, it’s similar in that you’re trying to meet in the middle in terms of being creative, but at the same time it is competitive and you want to be your own person, you want to be higher on the charts, there are so many things that are competitive about music, that’s what I feel the most, is that it’s a little bit of a competition.
Madness To Creation: What’s next for Devin Kirtz?
Devin: I do have a new song coming out the first week of June, so we are less than a month away from the next single and it’s called “Best Friend”
Madness To Creation: Can you share a little bit on what that song is talking about?
Devin: Yeah, without giving too much away, it’s a little bit different from anything that I’ve ever done, it’s definitely like a new age, self-love type of song. It’s kind of a comical, new age self-love type of song that will feel like, well to be honest a lot of my songs are a little bit slower and a little bit more smooth, kind of like “soul pop”, this one is more something that you can dance to or listen to at a pool party.
Madness To Creation: To talk a little bit about your songwriting, you’ve written for artists like Zayn and Jason Mraz, when you write a song for these different artists, what is the mindset that you have?
Devin: You know it varies in a sense when you write songs for yourself you think about the production, but when you write songs for other people you kind of think about what would their mindset be, you think about what they’re going through, what they would want to say, and how do I help them get their point across.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of your songwriting, after a show or during a meet and greet, have you had people come up to you and thank you for that song, or thank you for inspiring me with the words that you wrote in your songs?
Devin: Actually I have, especially with the song “My Day”, which the video has my actual grandma in the video, I’ve had a lot of people come up to me with that and said “this has really helped me” or like I had someone message me that they were on their way to a job interview and they weren’t feeling very confident, and that helped them through it, I just love that.
Madness To Creation: At Madness To Creation, we cover mental health awareness with a focus on normalizing mental health conversations , what helps you get through difficult times and what gets you happy and excited about life too?
Devin: Honestly working out and music, that and drinking wine with my wife, that helps a lot, I would say just keeping your mind going for sure. If you’re sitting and just stagnant and not doing anything, it doesn’t help with the brain. Working, moving, and staying active, and for me just going on my moped, just getting on and get to moving is super helpful.
Madness To Creation: One more fun question, take us into your first professional gig, what are some memories that you have from that?
Devin: I remember going on tour with Shwayze, and that was my first time ever doing shows like that, and literally just going on a solo trek all across the U.S. and we came back and I performed at the Palms, at that nightclub with Shwayze, and LL Cool J played right before us and me and Shwayze played right after, and because of that, people heard of me in Vegas and I got a residency at Club Hyde at The Bellagio, and I was playing there for I want to say about six months, every other week for six months, so that was pretty awesome.
Madness To Creation: What else would you like to add in regards to Devin Kirtz?
Devin: I was going to say keep playing the single “Hennessy”, go to Spotify and add it on your playlist, and just close your eyes if you feel like you have some mental health stuff going on, just close your eyes and relax and take a deep breath
And there you have it! While you’re at it, check out the music video for “MOVE”!
