Yukon rapper John From Dawson will make his international debut at The Great Escape Festival in the U.K., in May
John Dagostin, better known as John From Dawson, is chasing an ever-moving goalpost. The Dawson City-originated, Whitehorse-based rapper is constantly working on new music, exploring promotion strategies to grow his audience and shooting for bigger performance opportunities, and he feels like his long-time vision is starting to come to fruition. He recently completed a six-week music entrepreneurship course with Canada’s Music Incubator (CMI) in Calgary and has his first international festival appearance coming up at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton and Hove, England, this May. But as always, there is more work to be done.
“Leading up to the UK, we have a goal set to get my Instagram up to 4.000 (followers) so we look a little bit more professional and can talk to some music industry people more seriously,” he says. “Working with that, we’re releasing a lot more music this year.”
While Dagostin is largely the face of the operations, he has a uniquely-skilled team working alongside him. His mother helps with his administrative work, while his friend Sam Finton has assumed managerial duties, taking his first foray into artist management. Dagostin’s right-hand man is his long-time collaborator, Will “NiTPIK” Symanski, who produces his beats and performs live with him. Their most-recent release is the single “Dilly Body,” which came out in March.
“This is a song about one of my best friends that I used to live with in Dawson, who moved away back to his hometown,” Dagostin says. “I lost contact with him, so I haven’t talked to him in years.
“I’m hoping this love song that I wrote, this love song to a friend, can reach him and hopefully he finds a way to reach out to me. The idea is that if people have had this same scenario happen to them, the song will hit them a little bit harder.”
The idea came to Dagostin when he was staying alone in an apartment in Calgary. He decided to try and call up his old friend, only to realize how long it had really been since he’d heard from him.
“I played a beat from NiTPIK, and it just kind of hit me,” Dagostin says. “It turned into this full-on cute love song for my friend. I’m still a little bit worried … I hope that he takes it the right way. It really came from the heart and I hope it makes it to him. Maybe he doesn’t want a song about him out there, but I don’t use his name or anything.”
The CMI program was an enlightening experience for Dagostin, showing him that becoming a successful artist takes much more than making good music.
“In the course, they told me that your music can be a hobby, and that’s fine, that’s great. Art is art, and art is amazing,” he says. “But if you really want to achieve the things you want to achieve, you have to look at your music like a business.”
Balancing a business mindset with a creative one can be a challenge, but Dagostin is intent on not losing his spark.
“Discipline is something I have struggled with for sure, and that’s something I’m really trying to work on,” he says. “This is the only thing I care about and if I really want to get it to where I want it, I have to push for it.”
He remembers one of the biggest pieces of advice he took away from the CMI course.
“You can think about it like a business all you want, but this business doesn’t run if there’s not amazing music,” he says. “So, keep making amazing music.”
Admitting that his prior approach of making the best music he could and hoping it found an audience was not nearly enough, Dagostin has a changed outlook and a clearer vision going into the future.
“It’s very refreshing for me,” he says. “It’s the perspective. You think you might be pushing hard enough, but the difference between good and great is very small, and that difference is just that little bit of extra push that other people aren’t willing to do, so that’s what I’m focusing on.”
Dagostin credits the CMI program, as well as his appearance at BreakOut West, last September in Winnipeg, with cementing his music-industry presence and leading to his performance opportunity at The Great Escape Festival.
“I’ve never been to England,” he says. “But I’ve heard that Brighton is one of the craziest places. “I’m a little stressed trying to find grant money to get me and my team over there, but I’m just uber excited. I can’t wait.”
Performing alongside other hip hop artists at BreakOut West, Dagostin and Symanski felt almost scared to follow the other acts they’d seen. But as he performed, Dagostin realized how different his music is, giving him a renewed sense of confidence in his own unique style.
“The energy and everything we brought, the crowd really liked it,” he said. “I think it just showed me that I’m not just a small-town rapper anymore. I can fight with the best of them right now. I’ve just got to not let myself get down, and keep pushing like that.”
Dagostin wants to take on the world, but proudly showing his roots through his lyrics, crowd interactions and even in his stage name will always be at the core of what defines him as an artist.
“In-between songs, I’ll always talk about my town,” he says. “Going to the U.K., nobody is gonna know where the hell the Yukon is. We’re really working on our set and making sure I solidify how small of a town it is and how cool of a place it is throughout the songs and in-between the songs, as I talk about it.”
To iterate how far Dawson is from anything else, Dagostin likes to tell people his town is six hours from the nearest McDonald’s and has only one paved street but has 11 bars for a town of 1,500 people.
“I love that town,” he says. “It made me who I am. I grew up in a cabin and I wouldn’t think about the world the way I do if it wasn’t for that town. Even though I’m not living there now, I will eventually go back there, and I’ll always have it in my heart.”
Visit johnfromdawson.ca to keep up with John From Dawson.John Dagostin, better known as John From Dawson, is chasing an ever-moving goalpost. The Dawson City-originated, Whitehorse-based rapper is constantly working on new music, exploring promotion strategies to grow his audience and shooting for bigger performance opportunities, and he feels like his long-time vision is starting to come to fruition. He recently completed a six-week music entrepreneurship course with Canada’s Music Incubator (CMI) in Calgary and has his first international festival appearance coming up at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton and Hove, England, this May. But as always, there is more work to be done.
“Leading up to the UK, we have a goal set to get my Instagram up to 4.000 (followers) so we look a little bit more professional and can talk to some music industry people more seriously,” he says. “Working with that, we’re releasing a lot more music this year.”
While Dagostin is largely the face of the operations, he has a uniquely-skilled team working alongside him. His mother helps with his administrative work, while his friend Sam Finton has assumed managerial duties, taking his first foray into artist management. Dagostin’s right-hand man is his long-time collaborator, Will “NiTPIK” Symanski, who produces his beats and performs live with him. Their most-recent release is the single “Dilly Body,” which came out in March.
“This is a song about one of my best friends that I used to live with in Dawson, who moved away back to his hometown,” Dagostin says. “I lost contact with him, so I haven’t talked to him in years.
“I’m hoping this love song that I wrote, this love song to a friend, can reach him and hopefully he finds a way to reach out to me. The idea is that if people have had this same scenario happen to them, the song will hit them a little bit harder.”
The idea came to Dagostin when he was staying alone in an apartment in Calgary. He decided to try and call up his old friend, only to realize how long it had really been since he’d heard from him.
“I played a beat from NiTPIK, and it just kind of hit me,” Dagostin says. “It turned into this full-on cute love song for my friend. I’m still a little bit worried … I hope that he takes it the right way. It really came from the heart and I hope it makes it to him. Maybe he doesn’t want a song about him out there, but I don’t use his name or anything.”
The CMI program was an enlightening experience for Dagostin, showing him that becoming a successful artist takes much more than making good music.
“In the course, they told me that your music can be a hobby, and that’s fine, that’s great. Art is art, and art is amazing,” he says. “But if you really want to achieve the things you want to achieve, you have to look at your music like a business.”
Balancing a business mindset with a creative one can be a challenge, but Dagostin is intent on not losing his spark.
“Discipline is something I have struggled with for sure, and that’s something I’m really trying to work on,” he says. “This is the only thing I care about and if I really want to get it to where I want it, I have to push for it.”
He remembers one of the biggest pieces of advice he took away from the CMI course.
“You can think about it like a business all you want, but this business doesn’t run if there’s not amazing music,” he says. “So, keep making amazing music.”
Admitting that his prior approach of making the best music he could and hoping it found an audience was not nearly enough, Dagostin has a changed outlook and a clearer vision going into the future.
“It’s very refreshing for me,” he says. “It’s the perspective. You think you might be pushing hard enough, but the difference between good and great is very small, and that difference is just that little bit of extra push that other people aren’t willing to do, so that’s what I’m focusing on.”
Dagostin credits the CMI program, as well as his appearance at BreakOut West, last September in Winnipeg, with cementing his music-industry presence and leading to his performance opportunity at The Great Escape Festival.
“I’ve never been to England,” he says. “But I’ve heard that Brighton is one of the craziest places. “I’m a little stressed trying to find grant money to get me and my team over there, but I’m just uber excited. I can’t wait.”
Performing alongside other hip hop artists at BreakOut West, Dagostin and Symanski felt almost scared to follow the other acts they’d seen. But as he performed, Dagostin realized how different his music is, giving him a renewed sense of confidence in his own unique style.
“The energy and everything we brought, the crowd really liked it,” he said. “I think it just showed me that I’m not just a small-town rapper anymore. I can fight with the best of them right now. I’ve just got to not let myself get down, and keep pushing like that.”
Dagostin wants to take on the world, but proudly showing his roots through his lyrics, crowd interactions and even in his stage name will always be at the core of what defines him as an artist.
“In-between songs, I’ll always talk about my town,” he says. “Going to the U.K., nobody is gonna know where the hell the Yukon is. We’re really working on our set and making sure I solidify how small of a town it is and how cool of a place it is throughout the songs and in-between the songs, as I talk about it.”
To iterate how far Dawson is from anything else, Dagostin likes to tell people his town is six hours from the nearest McDonald’s and has only one paved street but has 11 bars for a town of 1,500 people.
“I love that town,” he says. “It made me who I am. I grew up in a cabin and I wouldn’t think about the world the way I do if it wasn’t for that town. Even though I’m not living there now, I will eventually go back there, and I’ll always have it in my heart.”
Visit johnfromdawson.ca to keep up with John From Dawson.
