01:20
Dan Haseltine Highlight
I was blown away seeing my favorite bands doing something beyond music, caring about something that was going on in the world. You can be a musician and you can also use music to do something else.
About Dan
- I grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts.
- As a child, I loved playing piano, but hated the discipline of lessons, so I would only really play for fun.
- I played soccer for most of my childhood, but when my grades started suffering because of it, my parents made me quit—that’s when I started getting serious about music.
- When I was in high school, my parents got divorced and I moved with my mother to Florida—moving to a big city and new high school was a struggle for me, so I leaned on my music as a crutch.
- I was inspired by the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985—after seeing my favorite bands use music to help a cause, I decided that if I was going to do music, I wanted it to connect to something bigger.
- Meanwhile, I had been playing music for my youth group and started making these connections between my music, faith, and social justice.
- In college, I started a Christian band called Jars of Clay with some friends—we eventually moved to Nashville, got a record deal, and found success in the industry.
- After travelling to Africa and learning about the HIV/AIDS and water crises, we decided to connect Jars of Clay to those causes and founded Blood:Water Mission to raise awareness and help.
