Testimonial from Artist Dani Lee Pearce
"The current reality of the music business is such a starkly depressing and bleak one when it comes to artists within it, old and new. The old ones don't recognize how much better it could be, how awful it currently is, and the newer ones seem to have it coerced into them that nothing could be better than it. An industry that treats its artists like property that generates product for profit. Artistry tossed out the window unless it sounds specifically like everything else put out by the major labels. At one time, I was dangerously close to falling into the same trap. I was very adamant about trying to make it big in music only a few years previously, and I sent my music to many labels many places hoping for a bite from a curious enough listener. Then in 2019 I found Grimalkin.
Since I joined Grimalkin and have been releasing music with them, getting to know my labelmates and their music, participating in events with them, I've realized that this is the only label I've ever wanted to be in. What I wish every other label could be in this industry. We all treat each other genuinely like family here. There is no inner hierarchy and even Spartan Jet-Plex, the founder and my de facto "boss", feels nothing like an authority figure and much more like a genuinely kind surrogate parent who has extremely good cats. I am supported here, I'm loved here, I'm respected here, and I'm always encouraged to take up more space and be my natural self. This is something nearly every other label never does. None of this. On top of that, being here has also actually gotten my music results, from reviews to blogs to physical sales to the fact that I will be appearing in print for the first time this year. To be a part of something that helps me feel so human, so seen and shown up for as a creator, I never knew that anything like this could exist, and it only makes me wish that it existed much more than just in this one collective. I don't think any other label exists that is more perfect for young up and coming artists, especially disabled and non-white trans folks. I hope that all of us who are in Grimalkin today can be together within it for as long as possible."
Dani Lee Pearce (she/her) is a Pacific Northwest-born nonbinary trans creature currently living in the Midwest who has been releasing music online since 2011. Many of her songs were written during a 5 year period she was homeless, and lyrical subject matter ranges from that experience to drawing from dreams, fantasy, folklore, witchcraft, mythology, history, intense emotions, the spiritual, the mysterious and the macabre.
