The four members of Judge Russo practice for an upcoming Halloween show. The members pictured, from left to right, are: Dewy D’Amore, senior; Mitch Spring, junior; Julian Runyon, OU graduate; and Harper Reese, junior.
THE BEAT
Local artists combine their love of music and performance at parties welcome to all.
I
BY SOPHIA ENGLEHART | PHOTOS BY JOSH ZIELINSKI | DESIGN BY CJ HERR
remember being taken to my first house concert midway through my first semester of freshman year in spring 2019. An indie rock band was playing unfamiliar music and the house was packed with sweaty, swaying students with wild clothes and grinning faces. At first, I was confused by why everyone was enjoying themselves — it was hot and smoky and there were crushed water bottles clustered haphazardly in the corner — but I closed my eyes and I listened. The music poured over me like a tidal wave and even though I didn’t know the lyrics, I found myself moving to the beat. It was then when I met Jane Kardotzke, a junior at the time who was studying the music recording industry and a lover of house concerts. Kardotzke first got into the Athens music scene as a freshman and built up an understanding of different local bands through her work with All Campus Radio Network (ACRN). She became interested in the management side of music and wanted to expand into band management for the local groups she had gotten to know. “I was a part of ACRN [as] their program director, so I was teaching disc jockeys how to have their own radio show … and I was also the booking assistant,” Kardotzke says. “[But] I wasn’t really booking anything. I wasn’t really learning anything either. And I was also following this band around called The Wastemen and I kept telling them I was their manager, and I would like to talk to them about how we could get them to make it big. [The] end of that school year, the beginning of 2019 in the spring, I was like, ‘I’m just gonna book them a show.’”
16
backdrop | Fall 2021
And she did just that booking an outdoor music event on Facebook that she dubbed “Jane’s Big Music Festival.” It was a success and sparked a desire for more concerts and music while creating a better environment for concertgoers, which is something that Kardotzke emphasizes. “I just remember not feeling [like they were] super welcoming in the scene to be honest,” she says. “I didn’t really like the culture that surrounded it. Like I felt like … if you weren’t like this specific kind of really different hipster then you would get weird energy from people and weird interactions, it just was not exactly the type of environment [for me].” With that initial first impression, Kardotzke wanted others to feel and comfortable and protected in a house concert environment, like she would have wanted. For her, it was as much of a personal experience as it was meeting new bands and people. “When I go to music … it's always kind of been sacred,” she says. “It is a place where I find peace and total acceptance. I’m totally in love with the experience. And I want to be able to feel safe and loved by the people around me and not feel like I’m not welcomed.” Kardotzke’s interest in facilitating different concerts and venues took off from there, leading to her and another student, Jennifer Kash, to form JacKed Up, a music organization that helped bands organize and play at different venues and houses across Athens. Jack Tecca of WARP, a local rock band, met Kardotzke as he was putting together the band, and she helped him and his bandmates take the first step into the Athens music scene. An OU graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in business administration and a
