Band Brings Awareness to San Diego’s Youth Homeless Outreach program, Urban Street Angels, With New Short Film Premiering on
Revolver Magazine Today
San Diego has the third largest homeless population of any metropolitan area in the United States. According to a 2013 report on homelessness by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are almost 9,000 counted individuals in San Diego who are homeless. On a national level, it is estimated that approximately 5,000 young people die every year because of assault, illness, or suicide while on the street. Additionally, an estimated 32% of runaway and homeless youth have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
Urban Street Angels is a volunteer-driven non-profit organization that provides a continuum of care to the homeless community in San Diego. The organization and its volunteers are committed to feeding homeless, supplying basic necessities and supportive services (including referrals to medical care, transitional employment and housing resources, and other providers of social services). Most importantly, Urban Street Angels strives to build trust and safe relationships with these young homeless individuals to facilitate their transition off the streets.
ART OF DYING has partnered with Urban Street Angels to provide the music for a mini documentary titled All I Want Is Everything: Combatting Youth Homelessness with Urban Street Angels. This mini doc told the story of three homeless youth in San Diego and their stories and experience of homelessness and how Urban Street Angels is helping them overcome circumstances they live with.
Urban Street Angels and 8 West summarize their message: “The mission of Urban Street Angels (urbanstreetangels.org) is to provide sustainable solutions that help end youth homelessness in Southern California and beyond. Our weekly outreach in the community and our startup venture 8 West (8west.org) align all of our efforts toward that singular goal. So the opportunity to work with talented filmmakers and media partners in the production of this video made abundant sense for us. We look forward to seeing this collaboration successfully promote awareness of the realities on the street, along with the specialized, novel approach we’re developing to tackle the challenges of homelessness.”
“We’re honored that Urban Street Angels is using our song as the soundtrack to their mini doc on youth homelessness.” says ART OF DYING frontman Jonny Hetherington. “The very name of our band ‘Art of Dying’ comes from the longer sentence: The Art of Dying is my life to live. We recognize that our time here is precious and that we’re all in this together, whether we’re people living with homelessness or not. We are all people. We’re glad to bring awareness to an important issue and we support the idea of giving anyone who’s wiling to accept it, a hand up.”
Though they are of Canadian origin, the epicenter of the band’s success has been in the US. Their major label debut Vices And Virtues (2011 – Reprise/Intoxication Records) spawned the hit singles “Die Trying”, “Get Thru This” and “Sorry” that charted on US mainstream, rock and alternative radio. “Die Trying“ reached the top 5 on the US Active Rock Chart. The band has sold over 250K digital singles, and over 50K units while exploding at radio and touring relentlessly.
ART OF DYING finished their highly anticipated third studio album Rise Up, with producer David Bendeth (Papa Roach, Bring Me The Horizon, Breaking Benjamin, Asking Alexandria).
Fans of rock can head over to Guitar World today for an early stream of the entire album. Rise Up premieres worldwide (except Japan) December 11th on all digital platforms including Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes/Apple Music.
