From the garage rock of the Mystery Girls to the vintage country homage of Long Line Riders, Jordan Davis has kept busy. While the official word on the demise of his band Space Raft is “They were unexpectedly called back to their home planet,” Davis decided to take the saying “Art imitates life” literally. He has created a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game based on the band.
Space Raft, the NES game, is a mix of obstacle based scrolling stages making use of many recognizable people and places from the Milwaukee music scene. The band's jealous, former bass player is the villain of the game who has returned to Milwaukee from California to steal the master tapes of the new record.
How has the lockdown affected your creativity?
My musical output has changed dramatically since the beginning of lockdown. Even though I do most of my music writing solo, having removed the incentive to play any of my new music with other people has severely decreased my desire to write songs. In some ways I am just realizing now how communal my own musical creativity has been.
This game however has benefited greatly from my lockdown. Since my community of developer peers exists solely online, I have managed to stay incredibly productive. In fact, it’s given me a rare opportunity to focus more as I closed out the crucial final months of development. This is my first game and I have read that the hardest part of developing a game no matter what the size is actually crossing the finish line, so in a way I am really grateful to have had the time to myself.
Do you have a routine or schedule for staying in practice or working on new material?
I am terrible at practicing. Generally, when I pick up an instrument it's to noodle or improvise for a few minutes unless I am determined to sit down and write something. I bought some new gear to help me make some solo music, but admittedly haven't had much ambition to do so.
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It's funny, normally I look towards music to help me escape the stresses of life but trying to write these days just pulls me further into my own mind which is currently riddled with anxiety about the future of things. So, I've been escaping into other things like movies and video games in order to help me cope with my surroundings.
My routine is pretty normalized when it comes to game development, about 30-60 minutes every evening, with a few hours on the weekend to work on bigger pieces of the puzzle. I find that building things, digital or physical is the one creative act that seems to help me calm down these days.
Are you making plans for when you can resume playing in front of people again?
At this time, I personally have no plans to return to a stage anytime soon. All my music projects involve multiple harmony singers and singing, to my understanding, is one of the worst culprits for spreading aerosol droplets which makes rehearsing a potential very dangerous proposal.
I obviously miss it, playing music is for certainly my most important social activity. If anything, this whole ordeal has made that much clearer to me. However, having a new hobby like game development is a great way for me to keep creatively active and for now is an incredibly fulfilling replacement for my normal muse. Plus, I've been managing to stay busy by creating chiptune music for other developers’ projects and definitely scratches that same itch!
To read more stories of Milwaukee musicians dealing with lockdowns, sheltering in place and more, click here.
To read more stories by Blaine Schultz, click here.
