Single released for World Down's Syndrome Day
ELECTRIC UMBRELLA release the video for BEST DAY OF MY LIFE featuring Kyle Daniel and Max Lewis to celebrate friendship and community on World Down Syndrome day.
Written and recorded entirely remotely on Zoom with people from all over the world, Nashville star Kyle Daniel teams up with Electric Umbrella during lockdown to help create the 5th single from their lockdown music album 'Sunflower Avenue' (released 26th March).
Max Lewis has been a member of Electric Umbrella since 2016 and has appeared on stage with them many times and It was Max's imagination that spawned their first full album 'I Am The Dream Machine' in 2018.
Max’s love of country started way back in 2018 when he began attending the C2C Country to Country Music Festivals, becoming SO well known to the 02 crowds that people from C2C’s Facebook group would often come up and say Hi!
"There’s something about Max that gets him noticed and in the country world it’s been his bright red cowboy hat!"
The friendship shown to Max by the country community reached a crescendo at the time of the 2019 C2C festival. Max had been looking forward to it all year, but a week before it ran he had the crushing news that he would have to miss it to have life saving heart surgery.
"The support from his “country family:” was amazing! He got get well cards, where friends had collected signatures and photos from artists at meet and greets,
gifts of merchandise and endless messages on Facebook. It really lifted him through this incredibly difficult period, and by the time he was well enough to get back to gigs, he had more friends than ever!" says father Paul.
At Country Music Week in October 2019 Max won a competition and received his prize from Country Hits Radio presenter Baylen Leonard. Max got the chance to meet headliner, US country star and American Idol winner, Scotty McCreery who said he would try to include Max’s song request in the show…
Little did Max know that Scotty would invite Max on stage to perform it with him! The video footage took the county world by storm and this is what ultimately led to our country musician friends working with Electric Umbrella now!
Kyle Daniel saw the video and asked to meet Max when he came over to #C2C2020 but Covid hit and it was cancelled just 24 hours beforehand, and Kyle had to jump on a plane back to Nashville immediately.
In time the two became firm friends. Kyle told Max the story of his old school friend John-Michael, who also has Down's syndrome and Max told Kyle about his Electric Umbrella friends & before long he was taking part in the shows and falling in love with what he saw… ultimately leading to The Best Day Of My Life!
"It’s such an honour to be a part of. I just think this may be one of the coolest things I have ever done musically".
KYLE DANIEL
Tom Billington, Artistic Director of Electric Umbrella says
"Electric Umbrella is all about bringing learning disabled people together with music stars so that together, they can shine brightest!"
"Having Kyle on our songwriting show was a joy. He totally 'got it' straight away and together we were able to include the thoughts, ideas and feelings of the whole zoom room (over 70 people!)"
"We managed to create a whole album that way, telling the story of lockdown as we saw it... all thanks to the creativity of the writers and the open hearts and minds of all of the participants".
For Max it's been pretty cool too
“I never had a dream come true like working with Kyle and Electric Umbrella on this song”.
But it doesn’t stop with Kyle… Over Lockdown Max had received a special invite to attend the newly established CES Virtual Shows which he’s absolutely adored. Just recently New York based singer Willie Lock sang a rendition of “Monie Monie” with “Happy Birthday” thrown in good measure for Max.
It was through these gigs, that Electric Umbrella have met
Clayton Smalley,
Caitlin Cannon, The Rees Family (Pelican212) and John Griffin, among many others - and were able to ask them to sing on LOCKDOWN COUNTRY SONG another of the 15 brilliant tracks featured on the SUNFLOWER AVENUE album out Friday!
Pre-save and pre-order it here and get 6 singles ahead of March 26th release date:
https://smarturl.it/sunflowerave
Video edited by: Troy Stacey
Lead vocals by Kyle Daniel and Max Lewis
Song written by Kyle Daniel, Tom Billington and Electric Umbrella
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