Since its founding in 2019 following a lively happy hour debate, Greg Simmons’s intellectual movement Staunch Moderates has built a sprawling, impressive body of work, using music, film, video, and news media to spread their message of social change: moderation and peace, and provide worldwide audiences with what Simmons calls “an excellent new form of entertainment.”

To date, the Aspen, Colorado-based group has released three full-length “multi-genre hip hop” albums; more than eighteen music videos; numerous MTV News-style news stories; co-hosted two dozen episodes of a radio talk show; produced an award-winning feature documentary; and finally, have made an award-winning feature-length Music Visual Album like no other. Altogether, Staunch Moderates content has garnered more than 200 million streams and views across all platforms. 

For 2025, the group is aggressively pursuing four principal initiatives, foremost among them their longstanding involvement in music: the visual album STAUNCH MODERATES EXPERIENCE; a virtual live concert video tracking the visual album; a sequel to the group’s 2023 feature documentary MISSION PEACE; and several stand-alone music videos including Mediteranée and Frank & The Rat Pack that were each first balloted at the Grammys for Song of the Year at this year’s awards. 

The three Staunch Moderates albums—The First Realm, Mission Peace and 2023—combine hip-hop with a wide range of tunes, all of which advocate for social change, born as they were from the controversy surrounding the 2020 election, the isolation and fear of the pandemic, and the ensuing riots and social unrest. In all, DJ Staunch and the Bigfoots’ can claim 14 first-ballot Grammy appearances, all verified and as seen in Billboard Magazine coverage of the Grammys for the last several years.

Simmons and his producer Meshach Lewis culled from all three records to produce a visual album, defined as is “a type of concept album in which the album is accompanied by a feature-length film or individual music videos for every song with interstitials MCing the narrative in between, ” Created in the spirit of A Hard Day’s Night, Purple Rain, and more recently, Lemonade,  Staunch Moderates founder Greg Simmons says, “In keeping with the creation of Woodrow Wilson’s 1920 founding of United Nations forerunner the League of Nations, now more than 100 years old, DJ Staunch & the Bigfoots gives you the STAUNCH MODERATES EXPERIENCE to celebrate the United Nations centennial. BOOM!”

Simmons describes DJ Staunch & The Bigfoots’ unique musical style as “mostly as low down, jazz & R&B hip-hop, where we merge into rock ‘n roll with a few of our tracks. We use eight genres of music; hence we call ourselves a multi-genre hip-hop band. Frank & The Rat Pack is more of a popping jazzy track. It along with most of our tracks are each historically or philosophically significant—in keeping with the ethos of our Movement.”

The first three tracks on THE STAUNCH MODERATES EXPERIENCE comprise a telling of a hundred years of American pop culture music history: Frank & the Rat Pack, Ramsey Lewis, and Rolling Stone Magazine. Frank & The Rat Pack has been a breakout video for the band, with hip-hop publication Hype Magazine calling it “a track out of left field in the best way—given their foundations and mission in the political sphere—temporarily stepping away from advocating for shared societal goals to pay homage to the ‘Chairman of the Board’ Frank Sinatra and the legendary Rat Pack…a lighthearted treat for the ears whether one is a music history buff, Sinatra fan, or simply an enjoyer of well-crafted tunes…It’s chock-full of sharp suits, vintage vibes, and smooth choreography, engaging viewers in an infectiously jazzy atmosphere.” 

Ramsey Lewis salutes the late, legendary three-time Grammy® winning jazz keyboardist, while Rolling Stone Magazine acknowledges the era-defining journalism on the left and right of founder Jann Wenner’s music bible. The fourth track, Socrates Café was the among group’s first videos, honoring Staunch Moderates Co-founder Bo Persiko as Simmons, DJ Staunch & the Bigfoots, followers and friends dance their way out of lockdown and through the streets of Rocky Mountain ski resorts. Staunch, the album’s fifth track, pays tribute (theme song) to The Staunch Moderates Movement’s mascot and standard-bearer, the eight-foot-tall bigfoot DJ Staunch. Tracks six and seven reaffirm that “extremism belongs on the field,” and not in politics, welcoming viewers to the entertaining, whimsical world of Bigfoots Football ® and Bigfoots Baseball™. Track eight is devoted to Bill Maher, who’s made the transition from liberal to moderate in recent years while retaining his devastating wit and A-list guests.

Several of the songs and videos—beginning with Staunch Moderates News (track nine) and expanding their messages in tracks fourteen and fifteen (Staunch Moderates News 2 and 3, respectively) set the Movement’s—and the country’s—news stories to song and spoken word. Staunch Moderates News 3 brings the news of the past year into focus leading right up to this past November’s election.

As a principal calling of the Movement, peace is a recurring theme in the work, combined in track ten with another enduring example of international cooperation, Olympics and Peace. In introducing Track 11, Love, Simmons says, “Love is a major cornerstone of our movement. Without it, none of this is possible.”

Journey: The Staunch Moderates Anthem (track 12) is characterized by insistent, staccato guitar riffs from Skunk and an exuberant women’s chorus highlighted by Mamie Van Doren—the last surviving sex symbol of the 20th century—as the soundtrack for the group’s philosophy, which Simmons crystalizes in his spoken word rap on track thirteen, Philosophy. Following Staunch Moderates News 2 and 3 is the atmospheric, ethereal Inspirations, a track identifying major tenets to hold in one’s personality to be a good citizen—or a Staunch Moderate. Track seventeen, Peace, is the bands most popular track,    a serene lyric video transposing Casanova Ace’s raps over a gentle jazz piano with the gentle giant, DJ Staunch, telling us what it’s all about and what we are stiving for. The final song on the visual album, Mediterranée, is a fun track with silky, engaging vocals describing the Mediterranean Sea and the vibrant cradle of civilizations that have surrounded it for millennia.

On the heels of the feature documentary MISSION PEACE before it (now on Apple & Amazon), THE STAUNCH MODERATES EXPERIENCE has been strong on the film festival circuit, with the feature-length, eighteen-track version winning seven film festival awards so far, most recently three at the Bollywood USA International Film Festival, and coming to you soon!. The shorter iterations of the visual album have racked up fifteen total awards. 

Frank & The Rat Pack and Mediterannée have recorded over a combined 15,000,000 YouTube views and programming across multiple video channels and VOD/OTT platforms like My Jam Music Network, Franchise Live, RX Music, NxtNowMusic, EssentiallyPop, and The Hype, among others. With the Grammys coming in February, each were balloted for Song of the Year, Best Rap Song and Best Melodic Rap Performance. While nominations eluded them, those two songs have been on many popular Spotify playlists and had terrestrial radio support from stations across the country. 

Spin Magazine recently recognized DJ Staunch & The Bigfoots as one of “Ten Musicians Shaping the Future of Sound,” recognizing “The movement has created multi-genre albums blending art and inspiring messages. Their documentary, Mission Peace, has boosted the group as a socially conscious content producer. The movement focuses on education through entertainment, intending on offering live performances and philosophy courses to help people understand each other better.”

Looking back on the year and the visual album, Simmons says, “It’s been fun. From the YouTube comments, my favorites are, ‘My fiancé and I love your track Baseball. Can we hire you to play at our wedding?’ And, ‘Your track Socrates Café is my recent favorite. I’ve been playing it over and over all day jamming out to it.’ We’ve gotten plays many times on Sirius XM Meg Griffin’s show, ‘Disorder.’ It’s been nice being recognized by the Recording Academy and their balloting us for Grammys fourteen times over the last four years. It’s been rewarding that many film festivals have granted us many awards for our music in their music categories allowing our movement  to make the claim ‘award winning music and films!’” 

Looking ahead, THE STAUNCH MODERATES EXPERIENCE has just inked  a deal for digital distribution in 2025, on the heels of MISSION PEACE’s placement on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and other VOD services in 2024. The visual album will play in person at the Golden State Film Festival February 19 at the TCL Chinese Theatres Hollywood.

Building on the visual album, a 2025 priority for The Staunch Moderates is its unique “live virtual concert series,” recorded and shot this past summer as the group was preparing for a live college campus tour, which was booked before the campus protests of the spring put the brakes on live performances. “We started work on the live version of the album to bring a positive, affirming, energetic outcome out of our frustration at the cancellation of the tour,” Simmons explains. They’re six songs into the program in preparation for another run at a concert series at universities across the country, and developing a companion college curriculum to build an on-campus audience for the tour. 

Finally, Staunch Moderates are working on shooting and editing together their third film—with a working title of MISSION PEACE 2, that they also expect to compete in the film festival circuit and secure distribution. MISSION PEACE 2 picks up from where MISSION PEACE left off, taking the audience on the journey from the beginning of 2021 through to today, where Staunch Moderates moved from philosophy, forums, polls and podcasts into music, film and the band dropping three hip-hop albums. 

Simmons concludes, “we also intend to develop our STAUNCH MODERATES into a theatrical production that plays Broadway or Las Vegas. Our highest goal or dream is to play the Sphere Las Vegas!”