By Chelsea Yarnell
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August 14, 2025
They’re elusive, a mystery: the band that doesn’t exist. When the Neah-Kah-Nie Coast Art and Music Cultural (NCAM) Foundation decided to host the Rockaway Beach Music Festival, they wanted to bring together talented musicians from the greater Northwest area as well as showcase local talent. That includes budding youth artists. “Dead Lines is a group of local musicians who together to write and rehearse a set of original music and debut at the Rockaway Beach Music Festival,” NCAM volunteer and Dead Lines band member Cosmo Jones said. “Our goal was to be able to incorporate student performers and our lead guitar player is going into his senior year at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. Go Pirates!” Coming together to form the band is Jones on drums, Chad Martin (you may know him from Brittney Bakes) on vocals, Mike Simmons (NKN music teacher) on bass, and NKN senior Lucien on guitar. “The band plays a genre of our own making called ‘ill ass yacht rap’ and it blends mega-lyrical hip hop with danceable grooves, live players with yacht rock tinted funk that can go from one to 11,” Jones said. When settling on a name, “Dead Lines” was chosen for many reasons. “One, we needed a deadline as several of us have always talked about working on music,” Jones said. “Two, we all live and work here, and own businesses. The Rockaway economy is designed for tourism and in the winter the lines are dead, so we need to do more. Three, it's hip hop and our rapper resurrected some old lines to get the ball rolling.” As a new band, Dead Lines doesn’t have any merch of their own yet, yet encourage guest to purchase NCAM items to raise money for the foundation. “This performance is a demonstration of what happens when a student gets to have their education supplemented and excels because of that opportunity,” Jones said.