Bino and Chelsea Peck— Mr. & Mrs. Something

What is your creative mission?

We aspire to create music that encourages people, whatever their life circumstances. In doing that, we don’t want to just offer cheap, feel-good, fluffy encouragement without substance. We want our listeners to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and look beyond themselves, ask hard questions about their identity and value, and be able to move forward in love.

What do you love about what you do?

We love how relational music is for us. Not only do we get to write, practice, record and perform together, which is awesome, but music has a unique way of creating special relationships. When our songs resonate with someone, they tend to let us know and a new friendship is born. When the encouragement from the music brings about encouragement through friendship, our mission has been doubly fulfilled.

What have you learned from your successes/ failures?

Because so many failures have paved the way for the next success, we’ve learned to worry a lot less. In all candidness, we often work extremely hard and find failure, while some of our greatest successes have come out of left field without our effort. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep working hard, but rather that our successes aren’t just our own. I’m sure there have been many self-made artists in the history of the world, but that’s not our story. For us, success requires people who believe in us and our music and lend us helping hands. It takes a village.

How do you keep pushing ahead after a difficult challenge?

Hug it out, remember what’s important, ask for help and keep on walking. It’s important for us to be able to forget the past enough to not let our failures get us down and not let our successes make us overconfident, but remember it well enough to learn from it and enjoy the journey.

Have you ever encountered resistance from family, friends, or the world in general? How did you overcome those kinds of blocks?

Actually, our family and friends are extremely supportive of us and our creative endeavors. In fact, our closest friends and family members even let us know when something we’re writing doesn’t sound good, which isn’t always easy to hear, but is super important. Some people in the world, of course, try to tell us that we’ll never be able to make a living from our art, that art and the ideas contained therein are impractical, won’t make a difference and are a waste of time. Our response is to try to love those people, let our art’s value speak for itself and continue living in a way that prevents us from turning into people like them.

How has your art and creativity healed you?

As we mentioned earlier, a lot of our songs are written in order to encourage each other and the people around us. Recently, we had a death in the family that we each took really hard. The very next day we had a concert booked and felt far from emotionally ready to perform. However, we went on with the show and were extremely glad we did. First of all, all the concert attendees that night basically became our family in that moment. They were all so supportive and loving toward us and our music. One girl in the audience even came up to us afterwards and said she appreciated our vulnerability because her grandmother had just passed away a couple months before. Secondly, we were singing songs that were written to encourage other people and ended up being encouraged by them ourselves.

What are your NFA Bullet points? What steps would you recommend for anyone who wants to kick some ass and get their creative dreams off the ground?

Well, we feel a little unworthy to give advice when we feel like we could benefit so much from receiving someone else’s. What we would recommend, however, is this:

1. Set aside time for creativity and everything involved with it, and honor that time. Treat it like a doctor appointment or something else that you wouldn’t miss or just neglect because you’re “not feeling it.” It doesn’t have to be a ton of time right away; just be consistent.

2. Know what your gigantic goals are, but don’t stress about big things not happening right away. Focus on accomplishing small goals and consistently chipping away at big ones. Those successes can build like a snowball.

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