Meet Landon and Aubrey Digh

Today we’d like to introduce you to Landon and Aubrey Digh.

Hi Landon and Aubrey, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Our story, or “journey” as we like to call it, began during our childhood years. We started taking piano lessons followed by guitar lessons at an early age and really continued to build onto our musical talents and interests in the years that followed up to where we are now.

I, Landon, ended up joining the band in middle school where I learned to play the trumpet, while my brother, Aubrey, took up the violin in the orchestra. During this time we learned even more about reading music and about the theory involved in it, but it wasn’t until high school that we both decided that we wanted to hone our musical skills and pursue it as a full-time career.

Now, jumping to high school, my mom had started pushing me to audition to sing the national anthem (I think she had seen a flyer or something like that in the school) to sing the national anthem for the high school sporting events. I guess she saw something in me singing-wise that I didn’t see in myself yet. I had never really sung anything except to myself in the shower or in the car while listening to my music. Ironically, I wasn’t even that big into making music or performing it much before my high school years.

Anyway, she kind of pressured me into auditioning, and looking back, I’m glad she did because I ended up going and trying out for it which pretty much jump-started my interest in performing and my recognition of having a voice. My voice cracked big time while I was auditioning in front of the choir teacher and some other students when I reached for the very high part of “and the rockets red glare” in the Star-Spangled Banner and just didn’t quite hit it.

It was quite embarrassing, to say the least. Of course, I didn’t get a callback or notified that I had gotten the part that year, but I was happy I tried. A lot of students there were choral students so she knew them and they had been trained for this kind of thing, but I figured I’d give it a try nonetheless.

Later that same year, I was sitting out waiting for my mom to pick me up and the next thing I know, Mrs. McCoy (the choir director who I auditioned for) comes out of the school, recognizes me, and said something along the lines of “I think you have a wonderful voice. It just needs a little bit of work and training, so I’d like for you to come to join my chorus class; I know we’d really love to have you and your voice.” I told her I’d think about it and get back to her, but before I had a chance, I received a phone call from her telling me she had gone ahead and dropped my foreign language from my class schedule and was signing me up for choir!

I didn’t resist at all, honestly, and while I was kind of taken aback by it, I thought it was the coolest thing, which is why I love retelling that part of the story these days. Therefore, I ended up joining the chorus which introduced me to the world of musicals because that’s just what the chorus and theater students did… performed in musicals. My first role was in Oliver! And I absolutely fell in love with the musical world after that. My brother, Aubrey, ended up coming into high school two years later and ended up joining the chorus and theatre group as well. That’s kind of where the start of our musical journey together came to be.

I think at this point both myself and Aubrey had started writing some songs at the same time we were doing this chorus and musical theater stuff. It was really cool to us that we had this musical talent, we sounded really good together, and people seemed to enjoy hearing us sing and play, so we decided to make it a duo thing and see where we could go with it. Back when we had been taking guitar lessons, our guitar teacher, Toni Stanley, had actually mentioned to us at one of our lessons that if we were to ever start a band, she thought it should be called “2Digh4” because of our last name, and it just ended up sticking.

From there on, Aubrey and I basically said let’s write some songs together perform as 2Digh4. We had and still do have the vision and dream of this turning into something bigger than we could ever imagine and we could go at it full time. It’s just what we wanted to do, and more importantly, what we believed God intended for us to do. We joined up and played at some of the talents shows the school had to offer over the years, some small local venues around the area, and both started singing the National Anthem for school sporting events. I was also in the marching band in high school on top of the chorus, and Aubrey was doing different things in music with music theory and choir as well.

We started at East Carolina University with the intent to major in music. We were planning on getting our bachelor’s Degrees in music but ended up not being too interested in having a background in Classical Music, which is what the School of Music at ECU focuses on. We wanted to focus more on what WE wanted to create our own songs with a more modern approach to music, so, in the end, we ended up getting out of the School of Music and stepping away from the Classical genre. Our plan had always been what we had discussed with our mom, which was once we got out of college we would really try to pursue our music career as hard as we could and see where it lead, but also wanted to have a college degree to fall back on just in case our planned career didn’t work out.

That was kind of the “pact” we made with our mom… she’d say “you can pursue your music as long as you want after college, but you’re going to have a college degree, that’s the deal.” Well, long story short, we ended up going for social work and both graduated with bachelor’s Degrees. I graduated in 2015 then Aubrey followed in 2016, then it was time to pursue our dream head-on. While in college, we both picked up jobs working at two different churches as worship leaders. Eventually, after we graduated, Aubrey stayed with the United Methodist Church as a contemporary worship leader in Farmville, NC and I picked up the job of contemporary worship leader at the Presbyterian Church in Farmville, NC as well.

We played a bunch of duo shows here and there, wherever we could find to play. We were just starting out so we didn’t know a whole lot about the industry as far as trying to do it full time. In 2017, we added our current members Melody Ballard on drums and Mike Kachman on bass to fill out the lineup, allowing us to play as a four-piece band. The two of them have really added to the sound we have always strived to achieve and always do a great job when performing. Aubrey and I would write and write and eventually ended up getting together enough songs to record a full-length album.

We went to the studio and got to record with some very talented and seasoned musicians (before Melody and Mike came on board). Joe Ballard is one of the guys who recorded with us and he is Melody’s father (Melody is our current drummer and Aubrey’s girlfriend). We had the pleasure of having Dan Grinstead on our first album as well and he is an extremely talented bass player. Both men helped us get the album together and recorded and were big influences on the work as well.

We had been working on perfecting these songs forever and we finally got it together and were able to record it and release the full album in September 2019. The July right before that we released our first single titled “North Carolina,” which was and still is a big hit with fans. We’ve been promoting the album ever since on social media and at shows, selling physical copies wherever we play as well as the songs digitally available on streaming platforms.

Back in 2020/2021, when everything was getting pretty rough with Covid-19, we did the best we could to play anywhere and everywhere still available for musicians to entertain. However, once quarantine came to be, as you can imagine, career musicians took a big hit financially due to the closings of restaurants and every venue out there. Fortunately, once everything started to open back up and quarantine was lifted, we were pretty successful with getting back into gear and playing places, having a pretty busy year for the remainder of it.

As a band, we are now working on recording our second album, which we couldn’t be more excited about and we hope to release it soon. It has been quite a journey that paints a picture of where we’ve been, where we’re at now, and where we’re headed. From magazine articles to social media promos to live shows, we’re trying to push our music anywhere and everywhere that wants to hear it; festivals, weddings, clubs, bars, wherever we can take it.

We continue to write music, steadily coming out with new songs, working on getting the new album and singles out, and just really hoping to achieve our goals and reach our dreams. We plan to make a trip out to Nashville later this year to bring our talents to the music city and see what happens…we hope you’ll follow our journey if you aren’t already!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
One of the biggest challenges that we faced from early on in our journey was people that didn’t really believe in us or what we were setting out to accomplish. Now, don’t get me wrong, we did have a great amount of support from people who did believe in us such as our tight group of close family members and friends, but we also had plenty of naysayers as well. We had some people who just refused to believe in what we were trying to do and accomplish, no matter how good we were or would become.

Growing up, we were always taught there was a very slim chance of “making it” in music and we don’t really know how to put a definition on that because what “making it” means to one person may mean something entirely different to another. There’s always been this stigma with musicians and artists period. Meaning, if you did anything in the arts, you weren’t going to make a living at all. It seems to be an accepted part of society, at least in this country, to deter anyone from going into the arts simply because they were taught that anything involving the arts would not be “fulfilling.”

“You aren’t going to be able to pay the bills.” “This is just not a career.” We had a lot of that coming our way, and still do every now and then. We had a lot of people telling us that we needed to get a “real job”, to do something more meaningful, and we’ve always thought when hearing that, what can be more meaningful than music? They always say music makes the world go round, so I’ve always wondered, how can anyone say music isn’t meaningful? Or that it doesn’t have a place in society? That’s just always confused us, and I think it would be hard to find a single person who doesn’t listen to music.

Perhaps there is someone out there that doesn’t I supposed, because anything is possible, but music is just so universal, so it would be hard to come across someone like that. There were a lot of people that told us that they didn’t believe we could go the distance or that we could even get to where we are now. They didn’t believe we’d ever make a name for ourselves because, in some people’s eyes, music just isn’t a good career. Now, it does come with a lot of sacrifice and pressure and is by no means easy at any turn as some may have you believe, but we just ignore all of that and really try to stay true to who we are, even when people tell us no.

People would tell us how talented we were and tell us to pursue what we loved doing, then turn right around and discredit our decision to pursue music. It was difficult to hear those things but this is always what we’ve wanted to do and what we’re sticking with as long as we can. As long as God allows, we will continue to pursue this dream of writing and performing music. There are plenty of people who have proven that you can make a career with music and doing what you love, so if they can do it, why couldn’t we? That’s probably one of the biggest ongoing challenges we’ve faced.

When Covid-19 came into existence and quarantine took effect, it was really bad for everyone, including musicians and venues. The public and musicians couldn’t go to venues because they had to shut down, causing a lot of financial turmoil and strife. It was tough and a huge challenge for us, but we were fortunate and blessed to be able to find some other ways to play our music and promote it, allowing us to at least keep our music playing fresh. This was more towards the end of quarantine when things started opening back up and people really seemed to want the music back because they didn’t have it for so long.

We were fortunate to be able to pick back up and play a lot of great shows throughout the rest of that year. We stayed busy and we’re very blessed, but as I said, it was definitely a challenge. We didn’t know how we were going to make our money (with it being our full-time job) when we weren’t able to play and get out there to perform at venues and were forced to stay at home. We honed our skills, wrote some more, recorded videos for our church worship, and sent those in for the live streams that churches had started to do. That definitely helped quite a bit.

My (Landon’s) biggest personal challenge was when I ended up accidentally getting the tip of my left-hand pinky finger chopped off in the Summer of 2021. Without going into too much detail, I was carrying a futon made of solid oak into the house when it slipped and, by instinct, went to grab it so it wouldn’t hit the ground, not realizing my pinky was wedged between the hinge where two pieces of the wood clamped down on it with massive force, crushing the tip and cutting it off.

I’m right-handed so my chord hand when playing the guitar is my left hand which is the hand that my pinky got caught. I wasn’t able to play guitar for a few months, but after a lot of work and generous help from our bass player, Mike Kachman (hand specialist), I was able to recover quite a bit and picked my guitar back up, learning how to play without the tip. I’m still working on getting used to it being gone, but I’ve come a long way and I’m just thankful that I can still play because it could have been much worse. However, what a challenge!

Those are just a few obstacles/challenges we’ve faced along this journey and we know we will continue to face a lot more as this road continues, but we look forward to facing them head-on as we chase our dreams!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Aubrey and I are full-time musicians and 2Digh4 is our band.

Our band plays at numerous restaurants and bars, festivals, private parties, weddings, and amphitheaters around Raleigh and throughout other venues in NC. This year, we are looking to broaden our horizons and expand our reach to other territories, and we have our sights set on Nashville.

In addition, we are both contemporary worship leaders in Farmville, NC. Landon serves at the Presbyterian Church and Aubrey serves at the United Methodist Church. Landon and Aubrey both write and compose the original material (our own songs) for 2Digh4.

Landon has written a novel and several children’s books which he hopes to publish in the near future, and he is working on starting up his own wood-working business on the side. Aubrey spends much of his free time honing his guitar skills and writing and learning new solos.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
Man, there are so many people who deserve credit for where we are now and how we got here…

God – The talents and opportunities He has given us to pursue our dreams are indescribable.

Our strong group of family and friends have supported us, our music, and our songs from the very beginning (they know who they are). We couldn’t do any of this without them.

Diana Thomas – Our childhood piano teacher.

Toni Stanley – Our childhood guitar teacher and who is credited with coming up with the name “2Digh4”.

Ruth McCoy – Our high school chorus teacher and a HUGE inspiration for us wanting to pursue a career in music.

Matt Edwards – Landon’s high school band director and Aubrey’s high school theory teacher.

Joe Ballard and Dan Grinstead – Helping us kickstart our first album and recording drums and bass on it.

Mike Kachman and Melody Ballard – 2Digh4’s current bass player and drummer who stepped up and started performing with us when we needed it most.

Samantha Pulley – For coming on board as our booking agent to help us book venues and gigs so we could focus our time on other aspects of the brand/business.

All of the musicians who recorded on our first album, 4 The Years Gone 2 soon!

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: 2digh4.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/2digh4/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2Digh4/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/2digh4
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCqZwYvSkhUOk8EQIECuSg
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3P4nWMKAc7ZxC7voYFNfQM

Image Credits
Stephanie Barnhill, Neal Tommy Gunn, and NC Event Pics