22
Backbone of the Music Industry
Solace in
Songwriting
38
08
Austin’s
Instrumental Venues & Promoters
Zayd Vlach has always lived in Texas but only moved to Austin 4 years ago. Since then, he has never wanted to leave, loving Austin’s bike accessibility, feel, and of course, music scene. After the music, his second favorite thing at concerts is buying artist merch and managing his need for water. Currently his favorite artists are The Smiths, Young Thug, and John Coltrane.
Zayd
Whether it be dancing, singing in a choir or playing an instrument, music has always been present in Maya’s life. Maya listens to a diverse selection of music from artists like Coast Modern, Courtship and Saint Motel, to classical musicians like Hayden, Doppler, and Telemann.
Maya
There are many videos of Olivia at age four dancing and screaming song lyrics at the top of her lungs. Even though she loved music when she was really little, she didn’t really start appreciating it until around age ten. When Olivia was in middle school, she went on month long road trips with her family and the long hours were spent listening to music and scribbling down the lyrics. When bored, Olivia lays on her bed listening to the radio station 96.7 KISS FM and singing along with her sister.
Olivia
Ella
Growing up, Ella was exposed to a wide range of genres and artists. Her father was always playing one of his new favorites and taught Ella to love and accept all types of artists, from R.E.M. to Billy Bragg to Maroon 5. She loves to stay up late playing guitar with her friends and also enjoys photography and painting. Ella currently has 30+ Spotify playlists, and her favorite bands are WALK THE MOON, blackbear, Bastille, and EDEN.
Ava
Ava lives her life with music in the background. Her cross-town commute is accompanied by extensive Spotify playlists and she can often be found with a single headphone hanging from her ear, bobbing her head to a rhythm while doodling song lyrics. Her favorite genres of music include psychedelic rock, chamber pop, blues rock, funk, and americana. She is also passionate about writing and hopes to continue fusing it with her love of music.
Sajan 2 - THE SET LIST
Sajan found his passion in music in past few years. His love for rap has grown ever since. His favorite rappers include: 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert, A$AP Rocky, and Migos. He is also currently trying to start his own rapping career. Hit Sajan up on soundcloud at: Yung Compass. He is also into Supreme and sneakers.
- A Letter From the Editors Dear Readers, The power of music can not be understated. From dance clubs to the London Orchestra, music inspires us all. Music is universal; it is something that anyone can relate to, serving to unite us in a way that words can not. We are lucky to live in a city that draws both fans and artists from all over. This so called live music capital has blessed us with a plethora of performing artists and a live music scene that never sleeps. Our city’s atmosphere has allowed each of us to cultivate a passion for music. We rely on music as a part of our daily routine and as a partner through all of our ups and downs. Leaving the house without headphones could ruin an entire day. It has been proven that music closely affects our emotions, a phenomenon that we all constantly experience. We marvel at the way in which seemingly random patterns of sound waves can inspire joy or sorrow. This is the wonder we sought to capture in The Set List. We wanted to show our appreciation for the music and to everyone who has made Austin the musical hotspot that it is today. This magazine began in appreciation of Austin’s music scene, but grew into something much more. Collectively, we got to see and understand the innerworkings of our city. Despite all of the amazing things we uncovered about the plight of local artists and the people behind the scenes, we still only scratched the surface. Our city is vast and music roots run deep. However, we did our best to share and capture all that we could with you. We all had a lot of fun creating this magazine, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Sincerely,
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8 16 22 30 36 42
BEHIND THE SCENE Austin’s music scene relies on more than just the artists we pay to see
RAP IT UP
Take a look into the city’s up and coming rap game
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
The untold story of some of the most important people in the music industry
SOUTH BY SOUTH-BEST An inside look into Austin’s largest multi-media festival
ACROSS THE SEA
Follow the movement of Nagavalli, one of Austin’s most unique artists
HOW TO WRITE A SONG
ENTS An interview featuring the life and philosophies of local artist Rick Busby
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FOUR AUSTINITES KICK BACK WITH A LOCAL BREW AND ANTICIPATE THE START OF SHADY GROVE’S UNPLUGGED AT THE GROVE PERFORMANCE. Photo Provided by Rusty Zagst
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Behind the
Scene
The unsung heros of Austin’s live music scene By Ava Motes
O
ur city is more than just a collection of venues that guarantee the opportunity to see a live show every night. Austin owes its vibrant music culture to the people behind the scenes: the venue operators and booking agencies that maintain the city’s legacy. The carefully balanced interdependency between venue, agent, artist, and audience is the foundation of Austin’s live music identity. One individual behind Austin’s music scene is Rusty Zagst, the general manager of local restaurant Shady Grove. Shady Grove is home to Unplugged at the Grove, a free summer music series held on Thursday nights. Zagst started at Shady Grove in 1993, and graduated to the role of overseeing all operations from front of house to back of house, including Unplugged at the Grove. Zagst works with the Grove’s booking agent, Marsha Milam, on booking the bands, production, marketing, and operating the venue on the night of the show.
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RUSTY ZAGST, SHADY GROVE’S GENERAL MANAGER, POSES ON THE ROOF OF THE RESTAURANT AS ALL OF HIS HARD WORK COMES TOGETHER DURRING AN UNPLUGGED SHOW. Photo provided by Rusty Zagst
“Pretty much anything that has to do with the concert itself, I am running,” Zagst said. After playing in bands and being an avid music fan his whole life, getting involved with the music series was a natural fit for him Unplugged at the Grove began with the purpose of promoting Shady Grove and drawing in business.
The music series itself did not make Shady Grove any significant revenue, especially because they did not charge viewers. It instead served as a marketing tactic to broaden their pool of clientele. With KGSR’s help, they were booking national and regional talent with large followings.
“Our goal was to fill the void in the music scene”
“The restaurant was new so we wanted to expose our restaurant to more people that didn’t know about us. That was where the idea of live music came in.”, Zagst said. The series began in 1994 when Shady Grove partnered with the radio station KGSR.
“Our whole goal was to kind of fill the void in the music scene by providing a free show that was early enough for families”, Zagst said. Unplugged was set apart from its conception by providing a comfortable environment for both young and old to be exposed to the live music that Austin prides itself on.
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“We knew that if we were booking really high quality talent, it was going to draw a lot of folks,” Zagst said.
folks that might not have been thinking about Shady Grove before,” he said. Even though the city’s increasing population has helped the music series expand, Zagst recognises cons to Austin’s change as well. “It’s getting more and more expensive for artists to live here and survive here,” he said. This is why Shady Grove takes an extra effort to support the musicians that they book and avoid exploiting their artistry for the benefit of the restaurant.
In the 90s and early 2000s, the music series was specific to americana and folk music, as it coincided with KGSR’s listeners. Since then, it has begun to feature bigger popular bands such as Kaleo and The Oh Hellos and has broadened the types of artists it books to even include hip-hop acts. Zagst largely attributes the music series’ growth to that of our city.
“Around here, we care, and I think the artists recognize that when they come here. Whenever they play Shady Grove, we take care of everything. Any sort of production needs, we feed them whatever [they] want, we take care of their crew, we take care of their family. We really make them feel special here because they are,” Zagst said. One of the most important things that Shady Grove offers to the musicians it partners with is exposure.
“As more people move to Austin and learn about our series, it has allowed us to book more diverse acts which in turn have been able to bring in the different
According to Zagst, playing for Shady grove at 8 p.m. guarantees a much larger crowd than a gig in a bar at 11 p.m. He believes that the exposure Unplugged
offers along with its fair payment of artists serves to enrich Austin’s culture as a music city. This kind of support of local artists helps them continue to produce music and perform. Live music is important to our city and is essential to our restaurants and music venues. The relationship between artists and Shady Grove is cooperative; the two are dependant on eachother. “I know how important live music is to our restaurant and if we don’t take care of the artists, they’re not gonna want to play here and they’re not gonna want to take care of us,” said Zagst. “At the end of the day, as a fellow musician, I have an enormous amount of respect for anybody that is able to do that for a living and I want to treat them with that respect.” Zagst values the benefits of live music from a business perspective, but his passion for it runs much deeper. “After a magical Unplugged show, when [I’ve] just seen a beautiful musical performance that has completely moved people...Those nights I go home, and I sit in my driveway I go ‘tonight we really did something in in people’s lives’,” he said. Unplugged at the Grove is bigger than just the restaurant business, it represents the importance of live music to Austin and its residents. “Music is just something that touches and speaks to all of us in one way or another. To be able to curate that, and to covet that, and to produce that, and to be able to have this thing where Austin can come together and experience that; is a really gratifying thing,” Zagst said. Promoting and Booking Austin’s Shows Austin would not be the same without people that really value live music working behind the scenes. Another music fan, instrumental to maintaining Austin’s network of venues and shows, is Graham Williams. Williams founded the local booking company Transmission entertainment and it’s accompanying festival Funfunfun Fest, which were rebranded to Margin-Walker Presents and Sound on Sound Festival last year. He also worked booking bands for Emo’s, a local venue, and has worked with bands, agents, and venues alike throughout austin. “When I was young, I was a music fan. Not really for a living, but more as a
1 2
1. SHADY GROVE FUNCIONS AS BOTH A VENUE FOR THE UNPLUGGED SERIES AND RESTAURANT TO ACCOMODATE CUSTOMERS DURING THE DAY. Photo by Ava Motes
2. “THE READY SET” PLAYS A LIVE CONCERT AT EMO’S. Photo by Truu, Wikimedia commons user
hobby,” said Williams. He got a job at emo’s at the age of 19, where he worked security. Eventually, there was an opportunity for someone to book the bands that played Emo’s, and he took it. “I really got my education on music at the club, just setting up concerts and doing stuff like that. It was a crazy time for music in Austin because Austin was just sort of growing up, and that made it a great time to get involved with the scene.”, said Williams. He was able to work with bands that he liked and got exposed to new artists as well during his time at emo’s. “The things that I was pretty involved with, as a fan, going into, were cool to do on a lot of levels,” Williams said. He spent his time at emo’s learning about the process of booking bands and hosting them at a venue. He worked on negotiating prices with agents, organizing hospitality for shows, and marketing the events.
According to Williams, all of the time from the moment a show is announced to the day of the concert is spent promoting and preparing. Booking for Emo’s took hours of hard work, which ultimately prepared Williams to extend his career after he found his footing in the business. He started Funfunfun Festival in 2006 as a fun project on the side while working at Emo’s. The festival originally began because Emo’s and other nearby venues had been booked for an entire weekend, and there were a number of bands that needed a show. “I had been calling other clubs and I couldn’t find anywhere in town for these bands to play. I just wanted to help the agent out and find them an audience to play for.” He decided to throw a festival that several bands could play. Prior to his idea, Williams had partnered with Alamo
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A FAN CROWD-SURFS AT FUNFUNFUN FESTIVAL IN 2015 photo by Ralph Averson, Flickr
Drafthouse in Waterloo Park for music and film events. He contacted them to help him organize Funfunfun in the same location. Waterloo was an ideal place for his festival because It was close to Emo’s and the other clubs that Williams occasionally worked with. Funfunfun was formed with the intent of bringing together those who appreciated progressive music. Many people would skip other festivals, such as ACL because they felt like they couldn’t relate to the bands on their lineup. Funfunfun however booked artists who were able to fit that audience. “There weren’t a lot of festivals like that; that were kind of edgy and doing sort of underground music, and that really set us apart.”, said Williams. A couple thousand people attended the first Funfunfun fest, and it had gone well enough for Williams to seriously consider doing it again. The year following his success with the festival, he left his decade-long career at Emo’s in search of something new.He travelled and learned about promotional companies, something he had never seen in Austin. “They would book lots of different shows at lots of different clubs. They didn’t just work for one specific venue and I
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thought this was what Austin was missing,” Williams said. “Typically it was kind of tribal [in Austin], just every venue out for themselves. We didn’t really have one place for everything.” When he returned to Austin, Williams started Transmission as a way to institute the concept of booking agencies into the city. “With Transmission, we get to promote all the best shows in all the best places in town,” Williams said. Transmission continued to throw Funfunfun Fest as their annual signature event. It wasn’t until last year that Transmission and Funfunfun were no more, rebranded into Margin-Walker and Sound on Sound, which now took place in an entirely new location. “We knew it was going to kind of be an uphill battle, starting Sound on Sound,” said Williams. When it began in 2016, marketing was very important. Transmission had to get the name out and educate people on the new festival. Sound on Sound, unlike Funfunfun which was in the center of town, is held 30 miles east of Austin at Sherwood Forest. Originally convincing people to drive out of the city limits to Sound on Sound may have been challenging, but Williams felt that it was worth it.
“Austin was used to having festivals that happened to be in the city. So, we had been wanting to do something new like that,” Williams said. “you’re surrounded by nature everywhere. We strung up a ton of lights and ended up having this really wild and fun experience as we made it come alive.” Putting together a festival is all about planning. You have to bring in the bands and market the event to get an audience there. But, according to Williams, it is very rewarding to walk around the festival after all the work is done and see all of the effort pay off. “You get to watch the hours that you put into something payout in seeing all these people enjoying the music and the experience, and that is one of my favorite things about doing it,” Williams said. The promoters, booking agents, and venue operators that contribute so greatly to keeping Austin’s music scene running are passionate about live music and sharing it with others. Although their faces may not be plastered on concert posters and they likely will not be pursued for an autograph after a show, they are the backbone of Austin’s music events. They are essential to maintaining the music scene that Austin so heavilly rides itself on.
BOB SCHNEIDER PLAYS A SHOW ON JUNE 8TH, 2017 FOR THE UNPLUGGED SUMMER MUSIC SERIES. Photo provided by Rusty Zagst
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Venue Insider A guide to Austin’s music hotspots Created by Ava Motes
ress
Ave
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M op ac Ex py
Downtown
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Zilker Park
South Congress
Stubb’s BBQ Famed for its fabulous barbeque and a huge outdoor stage, Stubb’s plays an important role in drawing big name musicians to Austin. In the 1970’s, Stubbs was at the heart of a booming live music scene; where musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughn and Johnny Cash “played for their supper”. By combining popular rock and alternative bookings, Sunday Gospel Brunch, and chilled beer and barbeque, Stubbs has kept its reputation of rocking Austin.
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Colorado R.
ACL Live at the Moody Theater Austin City Limits, a rock and roll hall of fame-inducted music taping series, has aired since 1974. It was originally recorded in Studio 6A in the Communications Building B on the University of Texas at Austin campus, but was moved to Moody Theater in 2011. Since then, the venue’s acclaimed acoustics have echoed the music of a wide variety of artists during tapings and concerts alike. ACL Live and Moody Theatre are vital to Austin’s music scene, and the venue is arguably one of the nicest in our city.
Elephant Room This underground bar located at 315 Congress Avenue is at the heart of Austin Jazz. Elephant Room features a wide assortment of draft beers and wine by the glass, opening at 9:30 p.m. every day of the year. With nightly live music bookings, the intimate atmosphere of this basement venue makes it the go-to spot for enjoying our city’s jazz scene. You must be age 21 or older to attend.
Threadgill’s (Riverside) The second of two iconic locations, Threadgill’s is home to with southern dining, a wide variety of bookings, and rich history with our city’s music. Threadgill’s is one of the many things that makes Austin “weird” with it’s unique and vibrant history of bookings. It was where Janis Joplin found her blues-rock sound and hosted famous Austin musicians such as Willie Nelson. Visit Threadgill’s to see memorabilia of Austin’s music history as well as to hear classic Austin music for “hippies and rednecks” alike.
The Continental Club One of the most reputable venues in Austin, The Continental Club has rocked our nightlife scene since 1955. The bar is a throwback to the ‘50s and draws an eclectic crowd of devoted, classic cadillac-driving boot scooters. Played nightly by live roots rock and country musicians as well as featuring happy hour performances from local songwriters, The Continental Club has a little something for everyone.
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Rap it up The aspects and challenges of rap Created by Sajan Patel
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Big Names in Austin’s Growing Rap Scene
A
very small percent of new rappers make it big. Mostly because rapping takes a lot of work and competitive actions. Everything from beats to bands leads young men and women into this passion every day with many challenges ahead. Because many don’t know what challenges are associated with becoming a rapper, I used the help of local rappers to explain some of the more difficult aspects of rap. Rapper Charlie CB grew up in Dallas but is now living in the Austin area. He started the label 203 music with his friend KO. Charlie CB started rapping in his senior year of high school. He was always interested in rapping as a hobby, but then he took it to the next level by buying this mic from his old barber. “I always felt like, if they can make music, like all the rappers that I heard on the radio, like Kanye to Wayne to you know, like all the people on the radio, then, I can make my music. I think it is cool and it’s an outlet”. Charlie CB said. He also said that he likes to listen to his own music, he compared it to hanging up a drawing because it is a form of art.
TOP: CHARLIE CB HAS RELEASED THREE ALBUMS WITH THIRTY DIFFERENT TRACKS IN TOTAL BOTTOM: AFTER PERFORMING HIS MOST POPULAR SONG, “BREAKTHROUGH”, CHARLIE CB TAKES IN THE ENERGY OF THE CROWD
Each artist has their own style and format for writing music. Charlie CB describes the process he takes to create a song: “Usually it’s just I put it in my head then put it down. I like to have it structured in my head and memorized, so that when I’m in the booth I can put some personality into it,” Charlie CB said. “ It’s not just being about a rapper, it’s about being an artist”. Rapping had a lot of impact on Charlie CB’s life. As a high schooler, he used rapping to get away. He didn’t take it seriously until he wrote his first song and realised he was made to rap.
“It’s not just being about a rapper, it’s about being an artist.” 16 - THE SET LIST
ALL PICTURES COURTESY OF SOURCES
SaulPaul is a local austin rapper with an amazing comeback story. After serving time in prison for four felonies, he graduated from UT with a 4.0 GPA. He has always been into rapping since high school and has pursued it ever since. He too faced many challenges when he started rapping. “Stage fright. Being nervous. Being shy. Not having experience performing in front of people” said SaulPaul. “There’s two ways like maybe I’ll come up with some bars in my head, and then I’m like woah, and I try to write a song about that concept. But then there’s some song that start with then beat, the beats speaks to me and it’s like I’m speaking back to it,” SaulPaul said. SaulPaul also said that breathing, vocabulary and pronunciation are necessary tools rapper use. “You can use words like clay” said SaulPaul. According to SaulPaul, making a song takes longer than you would think and it won’t sound like you’d expect. Jontae Slaughter is another Austin based rapper. When most people start rapping, they start out just like Jontae Slaughter. “me and my friend used to freestyle for fun but when I realised I needed to start rapping I got serious about it” he said. “Mostly the nerves. But it was also hard to get a lot of connections in the rapping community” said Jontae Slaughter. According Jontae Slaughter, “People think songs appear overnight. It doesn’t work that way there is a whole song making process and once you’ve crafted your song, you always feel the need to make it perfect” said Jontae Slaughter.
AFTER TURNING HIS LIFE AROUND, RAPPER SAULPAUL IS EXCITED TO RELEASE HIS NEW SONGS ON SOUNDCLOUD
Many people have been through the struggle of rapping. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make it through the struggles of starting out. Struggles of rap include making connections, stage fright, and vocab. Its up to you to find a solution.
TOP: HAND IN THE AIR, SAULPUAL PERFORMS HIS HIT SONG “RISE” AT A FESTIVAL IN THE CITY LEFT: SAULPAUL POSES WITH HIS GUITAR FOR THE COVER OF HIS SECOND ALBUM, TOWER TO TOWER 2
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Little Known Facts About Austin Music Are you a true Austinite? Eight short facts that you should know about music in Austin before you consider yourself one.
By Olivia Gonzalez
Austin’s economy makes 1.7 billion
Austin is known as the
dollars per year “Live Music from the music scene.
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Capital of the World.”
Austin City started Limits
Zilker Theatre puts on a
musical
in 1976 as a series for a TV show.
every summer.
Every year, thousands of people attend the music, film, and interactive media conferences showcased There are about at South by
Southwest.
2,000
bands and artists in Austin.
The number of
artists & musicians per capita in Austin is first in Texas and sixth in the U.S. (austinrelocationguide.com)
Austin has almost
200
music venues. (onlyinyourstate.com)
(austindetours.com)
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Out of Left Field The story of the often forgotten people who make music something we can find and use. Created by Zayd Vlach
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On the shelf of a record store lays a brightly colored CD, picked up by a perusing shopper. The record store has the smell of an old book just opened. The walls are painted a muted blue and records line the shelves, their bright colors decorating the walls. Upon seeing that it is by a local band, they add it to their bag, oblivious to all the work put into getting that shiny plastic disk into that record store.
T
hat is where men like Nick Joswick, Studio Manager for 5th Street Studiosand Dan Plunkett, Co-Owner of End of an Ear Records come in.
Being in the music industry is as demanding as it is rewarding said Joswick. It requires extensive work and often times it requires a single person to fill multiple positions. Joswick said that he works as the studio
“Music is a lot about memory, and I think about stores personally, I look back to certain stores and moments I bought records and I remember it� Both have given their lives to the Austin Music Scene. Although they are on opposite sides of the process, they represent crucial roles that keep music expanding and accessible to all. NICK JOSWICK CASUAULLY RESTS OUTSIDE 5TH STREET STUDIOS
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manager, a lead engineer, a producer, and a tour manager. Joswick runs a music studio and gets to work with all types of artists, from Snoop Dogg to a Latin Christian rock band.
However different the artists he works with may be, they all come in with ideas that Joswick has to turn into music. According to him, most artists, especially the more experienced ones, come in knowing their parts and knock it out. But for younger artists, or people who have never done this before, it can be a challenge. Some artists have a difficult time in the the studio, said Joswick. The pressure of the environment can cause some artists, especially new ones, to freeze up when they start recording. The studio costs money and the more time you spend recording, the more money you have to pay. According to Joswick this is called the red light syndrome. Joswick started as an audio engineer. He went to school in Arizona and then came to Austin to work in a studio. 5th Street
THE DRUM SET HAD JUST BEEN USED FOR A RECORDING SESSION. THE MICS ARE STILL ATTACHED.
“There is an old adage you have to do something 10,000 times to be considered a master. If I haven’t reached my 10,000th by now, I am getting close. But it is always a process.”
Studios were the first to contact him. He started by putting microphones on all the different instruments and help bands get a proper recording of their music. As he gained more experience he began working as a producer. A producer is somebody that takes that song idea and helps craft it and shape it and become something great,” Joswick said.“ Become, the artist’s, better than the artist’s vision. Of course, if it is an amazing artist, it is sometimes hard to beat what they have, but that is what a really good producer does.” According to him, sometimes being a producer just means fixing a couple of notes or changing an instrument, but other times it can be much more. “There are some clients that I have that ... they come in with a very rough song idea, and then we actually explore what that idea can be in the studio” Joswick said. Joswick has been doing this for over 10 years. He says he still loves it, calling it his dream job. However, it isn’t always easy. His hours are long with most musicians waking up close to noon and going to sleep late at night. He also works with many artists who have to record on the weekend because they have to sustain a normal job. Sometimes, everything else can become lost in his job. Joswick said “To me it has always been the hardest of balancing like this place can also be a rabbit hole. Where you just fall into the studio and it sucks up so much of your creative mind, and at least, I have always been the type that I can get tunnel vision,
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THE MAIN CONTROL BOARD AT 5TH STREET STUDIOS. IT WAS CUSTOM MADE FOR THE 1940 OLYMPICS IN GERMANY.
and when I am in the studio, everything else, like the world outside just disappears, and this is all my world”. “Music is all about passion and dedication and just like we were talking about earlier with practice... all of this stuff that I am doing I might not be playing music, but I have practiced a lot at running that console and patching stuff through that patch bay and running it to the tape machine,” said Joswick. “There is an old adage, you have to do something 10,000 times to be considered a master and if I haven’t reached my 10,000th by now I am getting close, but it is always a process.” To Dan Plunkett, Co-Owner of End of an Ear Records, the best part of the job, and why he does still does it, is an easy question to answer.
A FULL LOOK AT THE STUDIO. IT IS DECORATED WITH RUGS AND SOFT COUCHES, EXURING AN AURA OF CREATIVITY AND COMFORT.
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“It is definitely customers. It is constant learning thing, I have been buying records myself now for 40 years, and I am still learning new stuff. Something came out when I was your age or younger. So, there is so much stuff out there. There is just no way to know it all. So, customers will come in with things that they like and what are you interested in, I am into these cool Brazilian records, like, ‘Oh! We should check out this!’ This constant discovery. And you can say just getting it at a personal level” said Plunkett.
“Because that is what it really comes down to - a love of music, the energy and the positivity that it can bring - it is a very powerful thing it can impact a lot of people.” Now that high school band has an album recorded. It’s been refined and perfected into exactly what they want. Now they need to get it to people. A wonderful way to do this is to get the album into local record stores like End of an Ear Records. First they need to sign a record label. “There are definitely a lot of labels and distributors or family of labels that use distributors. Some we have known for a long while. We kind of trust their opinion, we will be in touch with the distributors and they will ship.” He is describing the relationship between labels, distributors and stores. Some major labels are also distributors, but most of the time a label releases an album by an artist that it signed. Then distributors pick up that album from the label and contact stores to get them the album from them. The vision of that high schooler has finally made it onto that shelf. Now Plunkett says it’s up to the community of music lovers to pick it up and listen to it. This discovery is exactly what Plunkett loves about record stores. “In fact, I can remember like yesterday where I bought it and where I was. And there are things that just have an impression on you. You want to kind of create that for the people.”
A GUITAR RESTS ON THE WALL INSIDE THE STUDIO.
Local record stores, like End of an Ear, are made of passion. They are started by people wanting to share their passion for music and they are kept alive by people’s passion for the same art form. This is what End of an Ear tries to achieve, to grow the love of music in the community. In a lot of ways Joswick and Plunkett are very
similar. They talk about their jobs with a tone so full of care and tenderness, a tone that I rarely hear. “Because that is what it really comes down to, a love of music,” Joswick said. “The energy and the positivity that it can bring, it is a very powerful thing, it can impact a lot of people.”
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Musical Timeline ~800 BC
~40,000 BC
thought to be the oldest instrument, flutes made of bird bones and ebony have been discovered in caves in Southern Germany. These flutes are called the aurignacian flutes. Some think that the oldest instrument is a bone flute 3,000 years older, but most accept that it was just a bone bitten by wild hyenas.
Ancient Greece had double flutes and primitive bagpipes. Writings indicate that one instrument would play a drone note while the other instruments played melodies around it.
~ 9 BC
Music notation was reinvented, became clearer and more concise. It was called Neume notation and was used by monks to write and record gregorian chants. It is the basis for modern musical notation.
Photo Credit: JosĂŠ-Manuel Benito Ă lvarez
Photo: Tore SĂŚtre / Wikimedia
~ 2 Million Years Ago
~1,500 BC
first recorded music, written in cuneiform The first ever instrument and is written using a Pythagorean tuning of was the human voice. It dates from the beginning the diatonic scale. It is a tablet with multiple of human time. It is thought that early music songs on it, called the reflected natural rhythms, Hurrian Songs. It is a very repetitive and simple. collection of Sumerian Hymns
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~1100
Polyphony became very popular in this period. Polyphony is music with a drone The ravanahatha is a bowed fiddle note and then melodies playing over from India. It is one of the oldest that. string instruments discovered. It is constructed by using half a coconut and then stretching goat hide over it. You then Place horse hairs along the neck of the instrument. It is played using a bow and is the oldest ancestor of the violin.
~700 AD
A Brief History of Music
Created by: Zayd Vlach
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph cylinder. This was the first device that could record and playback sound. This was the grandfather of all later recording technology.
The classical period brought in a new trend in music. It was characterized by symphonic texture or a melody paired with an accompaniment. The melodies were very similar in tone and rhythm to the human voice, helping make classical music more popular than opera, which had risen to prominence.
1894
Photo Credit: Medvedev
2001
Photo Credit: Harald Bode Archive
~1750
Digital Audio Workstation was invented. It was called The Digital Editing System and consisted of a minicomputer running a software package, a hard disk drive, a oscilloscope, and a video display terminal. It had the capabilities to edit audio recorded on the software.
Photo Credit: Niko Puranen
1709
In Italy first Piano was invented. It was the first keyed instrument that allowed you to change the volume of the notes. It’s predecesor, the harpsichord, although very similar in design only allowed the player to play one volume. This versatility made the piano a major and important instrument.
George Beauchamp invented the first electric guitar. Called the “Frying Pan�, it gained popularity by 1935 and was often used in big jazz bands who wanted to have a guitar solo but needed a guitar that could be heard in front of the band.
1877
Photo Credit: Museum of Making
The invention of modern scales occurred. This changed the way music was thought of from modal to tonal. This led to a practice of tonality instead of the previously common practice of modality in music.
1931
Music at English Wikipedia
~1600
1978
Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio. This would go onto revolutionize the music industry, making music much more accessible and popular than ever before.
1937
Napster was created. It was the first online community where users could upload and share music. Streaming music from the internet is now the standard way to consume music, and Napster was the first to do it.
The first polyphonic synthesizer was invented, called the Warbo Formant Orgel, was a four voice key assigned keyboard. It had two formant filters and a dynamic envelope controller.
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PHOTO BY NICK TERREL
South by South-best
Everything is bigger and better in Texas, including the festivals.
Story by Olivia Gonzalez
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D
uring March of 1987, 700 people attended South by Southwest (SXSW) which started the first SXSW. Then, in 2014, over 400,000 people attended the official showcase, but this number doesn’t count all the people that traveled to Austin and created unofficial showcases. How did this number change so drastically in 27 years? South by Southwest has had a major role in shaping Austin into how busy and popular it is today, and is occurring now. Not only has affected Austin, it has also affected local musicians and local businesses. SXSW relates to and impacts our communities by bringing entertainment, business, and opportunities.
Co-owner of Tesoros Trading Company Kisla Jimenez agrees. “South by Southwest has been a great opportunity for Austin overall to put itself on the map,” she said. SXSW involves people from different parts of the music business to see bands. “It’s is also a place for other people in the music business showcase bands that they’re working with so that other people, different part of the music business can see them, and get excited about that,” Bonesaw said. “I’d say it’s a music conference and it’s a music showcase.”
One of SXSW’s three compartments is the music conference part of it. The music conferences are for “anybody involved in the music industry to come and meet and just talk about the state of music and the state of the business,” manager of band Full Service Tim Kepner, aka Bonesaw, said.
Bonesaw thinks that it’s a way for record labels, managers, and agents that represent bands to create “buzz” about those bands.
SXSW affects local businesses by bring business, since many people fly in from other states to go to it, and end up buying things at stores, eating at restaurants, using hotels and other necessities to stay in Austin during the time SXSW takes place. SXSW is helpful to Austin’s economy and also a fun way to get Austin on the map.
Bonesaw says the benifits include the fact that “all these awesome bands come to Austin and play in one week. What’s extra cool about it,” Bonesaw says, “is that most of the shows are free, because they’re promotional shows.” Often times, when bands come to tour in Austin, a viewer will pay around $50 a ticket for one show. SXSW is a much more affordable option.
“I think it’s a great thing for Austin, obviously it brings a lot of money and attention to this city, and it does give us an opportunity to network and see other bands,” Bonesaw said.
Even though some complain that SXSW crowds Austin, it also benefits Austinites.
“Every year, many of my favorite bands come to town, and I get to see them free,” Bonesaw says. PHOTO BY NICK TERREL
BONESAW, A MEMBER OF LOCAL BAND, FULL SERVICE, POSES FOR A PICTURE WITH HIS GUITAR AT THE WHITEWATER AMPITHEATER IN NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS
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KISLA JIMENEZ OPERATES AS THE CO-OWNER OF THE TESOROS TRADING COMPANY
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“It’s also a place for other people in the music business to showcase bands that they’re working with so that other people and a different part of the music business can see them and get excited about that. I’d say it’s a music conference and it’s a music showcase.” However, you have to get invited to play in SXSW. “There’s an official side of it where you have to be invited to be an official member of it, whether it’s a speaker at the conference or for your band to play officially in it,” Bonesaw said. In order to officially play in a showcase, you have to go through a whole process, part of which you aren’t directly involved in. “So let’s say I’m a band manager in LA, and I’ve signed this band called ‘Pebbles on the Floor,’ and I’m really excited about them. I know somebody at SXSW, so I contact that person.” Bonesaw said. After contacting them, you ask to get this band a showcase. Your relationship might be good enough, so they tell you they can fit you in. After you get confirmation, you “get Pebbles on the Floor to come, and they play their official showcase, which is like the one big show. And, because they came all the way to Texas, they’ll do a bunch of little promo stuff. They might play on the radio, they might do a special unofficial showcase, just trying to get everybody talking about Pebbles on the Floor,” Bonesaw said. Everyone from the music business comes, so if you become one of those buzz bands, those people in the business then go back to their city and talk all about the band which then might get them on a tour or other ways to increase their popularity. When SXSW is happening, it doesn’t only affect those in South by Southwest, but also buisnesses. Jimenez says that since “our store has been around since 1989 and it used to be on the corner of 2nd and Congress,” they would see a huge influx of shoppers in the store.
“It was mostly you know record executives, but a lot of regular musicians and people who came to the conference came, so for us it was kind of like a second Christmas.” This is before corporations came to Austin and started parties all over the city, which is now why SXSW doesn’t affect Jimenez’s business as much as it did before. “We were majorly impacted by SXSW until about ten years ago. We were really impacted of the beginning and now we’re not,” Jimenez said. SXSW has increased so much in size partly because of all the parties held in the day when music isn’t happening. “They want to target creative types and younger people so they host really big parties that are mostly in East Austin, where they have a stage and they have bands to play all day. There’s so much going on that I think that people are thinking less about going shopping,” Jimenez said, laughing. Despite the fact it doesn’t affect Tesoros now, Jimenez says that they still really like SXSW. “It doesn’t really impact our store, our business, anymore, but we still really appreciate the people, of course we don’t want everyone to move here, we want them to come visit and then go back home,” Jimenez laughs. Jimenez also appreciates the effort of the Chronicle and the owners of the Chronicle to keeps Austin alive. “We still appreciate that effort of the Chronicle and the owners of the Chronicle to keep the spirit alive in Austin, the United States, and not just in the United States, but all over the world as a place for creative thinking and imagination.”
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Music Festivals
LIVE MUSIC BY THE NUMBERS By Maya Ravi
COACHELLA AUSTIN CITY LIMITS
BONNAROO LOLLAPALOOZA SXSW
NUMBER OF ATTENDEES (THOUSANDS)
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300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
Although Austin is known as ‘the live music capital of the world’, there are a number of extremely popular music festivals around the nation, some drawing enourmous crowds of over 160,000 people. Even though these festivals are clearly very popular, they can’t even begin to compare with the sheer number of people drawn by local music festivals, with SXSW leading by far with an estimated 286,000 attendees over the 10 day festival. And Bonnaroo geing the least popular festival outof the five, but still drawing a shocking 10,000 attendees. The graph below displays the trend between the pricing of tickets to a festival compared to the number of attending bands/artists from the 2016 festival season. To the right, the graph shows the number of bands/artists performing at each festival respectively, compared to the estimated number of attendees (the number of attendees is shown by the thousands; some representaion may be distorted)
SXSW ~2,000+ BANDS SXSW $695
~2,000+ BANDS $695
100,000
50,000
BONNAROO
COACHELLA
COACHELLA 199 BANDS 199 BANDS $285 $285
LOLLAPALOOZA
LOLLAPALOOZA 130 BANDS $230 130 BANDS $230
BONNAROO 184 BANDS 184 BANDS $308 $308
ACL 130 BANDS ACL 130 $225 BANDS
$225
0 NUMBER OF ATTENDEES (THOUSANDS)
THE SET LIST - 33 FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT; Maxwell, Wes. “Austin City Limits, Infographic” October 11, 2016., http://www.coachella.com, http://www.sxsw.com, http://www.aclfestival.com, http://www.bonnaroo.com, http://www.lollapalooza.com
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Across the Sea The story of Austin artist, Nagavalli By: Maya Ravi
T
he introduction of live music has completely transformed the small Texas town of Austin into a city bustling with aspirational artists, bringing music festivals and the demand for live music venues with them. Over a short span of years, the music culture of Austin has become more diverse and extensive, with artists streaming in from as far as India, such as local artist Naga Valli, who goes by the stage name Nagavalli. The explosion of these new artists have diversified the whole of austin culture, bringing with them music venues to cater to each specific taste. In this article, local artist Nagavalli talks about her journey as a musician, traveling the hundreds of miles for this small town brimming with music, and Lynn, a representative for Austin venue, Hole in the Wall, talks about the Hole in the Wall’s transformation to meet the demands of the explosive live music culture of Austin. Although Nagavalli traveled to Austin from Mumbai, nearly crossing the globe, the change was not the most difficult part of her journey as a singer/songwriter, and the mixing of both starkly different cultures turned out to be a blend she still carries. “Having
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grown up in a fairly cosmopolitan environment in Mumbai, India, I was exposed to Western culture and music at some level as well. So overall, my art is very reflective of the traditional Indian as well, the city/cosmopolitan culture and background I grew up around,” Nagavalli says. Every country and culture has their own influence on music, Nagavalli describes her music as the blend of the Austin combined with indian music cultures. “As much as I honed my vocal skills in India, Austin is where I grew and continue to grow as a songwriter, performer and band-leader. The artists I work with - musicians, producers etc. are mostly from Austin and bring their own experience and influences to my sound. This has been a blessing as well as tricky, given the blend of music I perform. I have always had a range of listeners from folks who are generally interested in singer-songwriters, to folks who are into world music and hip-hop.” Nagavalli says. Live music has been popular around the world for countless decades, but as music companies such as Spotify or Apple Music grow in popularity, the demand for live music in some countries is on the decline. “The concept
of a live music scene didn’t quite exist when I was growing up [in Mumbai], except for some collegiate rock shows that I had attended. So the hardest time was, perhaps, when I was living in Austin [working a corporate job, which I still do], and could not figure out how to get started in the live music scene! It took me a bit to find my way into the scene, a couple of false starts, and some resistance and judgement from family members back home around me being in a “band” [They worried that it was too forward for an Indian girl].” Nagavalli says. After spending just over 14 years in Austin, Nagavalli has recently been named in the Top 10 Female Vocals and World Music artists at the 2015-16 Austin Music Awards. “Coming from another country and trying to do my thing here, showing up on the Austin Music Awards listings did give me a sense of belonging to the music scene here.” Nagavalli says. At this point in her career, Nagavalli has performed at countless live music venues and has collaborated with many artists, on and off the stage. “I loved all these experiences for reasons including the amazing musical talent, work ethic and dedication
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The music ‘business’ itself is difficult, so
challenges never seem to cease, but there is the contentment that one is pursuing loves.” the
what one
photos by John Doe
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“
music live, the drinks cheap, the community satisfied.� Keeping the
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to their art that such musicians bring. And there is no greater joy for me than when something ‘clicks’ in the studio or when you have a magical moment with another artist on stage.” Nagavalli says. Coming from India to Austin, Nagavalli has skyrocketed in the local music industry, frequently performing at popular public venues and selling out her unique shows. “The music ‘business’ itself is difficult, so the challenges never really seem to cease, but there is the contentment that one is pursuing what one loves.”As she looks to the future of her career, Nagavalli says; “I have grown in confidence as a performer over the years and hope to keep moving in that direction.” The increasing supply of aspiring and maturing artists flooding into Austin has led to the demand for more local live music venues, and the Hole in the Wall has answered that demand. “I’m not sure exactly the date when the Hole in the Wall switched from being a sports bar to a music venue, but the story goes like this: when Doug Cugini opened the Hole in the Wall in 1974, he bolted a Louisville slugger to the front door as a handle because he wanted to place to be a campus favorite for watching sports games. But that was back when there weren’t three live music venues on every block. And when Blaze Foley or Nanci Griffith walked by and saw through two giant windows an opportunity to play for a crowd near the center of town, they stumbled or sauntered in to see if they could set up a chair in the corner and play a few tunes,” Lynn, spokesperson for the Hole in the Wall, says. “After a few Sunday nights of a developing crowd who came to the Hole in the Wall to see Nanci and not the game, Nanci demanded that Doug turn the television’s off before she would play a song. Doug didn’t start off to build a
music venue, but he was in the right place at the right time, and he listened to the incredible musicians who are really the foundation of the Hole in the Wall’s tenure as the longest-running stillfunctioning live music venue in Austin.” Lynn says. Maintaining its role as a venue for rising artists in Austin, the Hole in the Wall welcomes new local artists in every performance. “In addition to the long history of the Hole in the Wall, which makes it unique from other live music venues, our status as an incubator of burgeoning talent and the diversity of our booking calendar sets us apart from other venues.” says the Hole in the Wall. “The Hole in the Wall staff work really hard to make the venue an accessible and welcoming space for regulars, tourists, diverse community groups, and the university crowd from across the street.” Lynn says. The Hole in the Wall is not only a casual venue for local artists to perform, but also a venue for more formal events. “Just this weekend, we hosted a wedding reception for a local couple in the literary community. In June 2017, we hosted a two-weekend run of onewoman performance pieces written and performed by local artist and musician Jean Caffeine. In addition to providing meeting space for community organizations like the Feminist Drinking Club and Local Progress, we also invite graduate students at UT-Austin to hold office hours in our restaurant/patio bar area to avoid holding office hours in shared spaces on campus where the Texas legislature has voted recently to allow the concealed carry of handguns.” says the Hole in the Wall. In addition to welcoming UT related events, the Hole in the wall is also involved in many community service programs. “We’ve worked with nonprofits
East of Cameron and the Rainbow Coalition to host benefit shows that fund the local humanitarian industry, and we also recently teamed up with KVRX to increase young audience’s exposure to culturally diverse musicians in Austin’s live music scene. We feel responsible to this weird and wonderful community in which we’ve operated for so long, and these cultural initiatives help up live up to that responsibility.” says the Hole in the Wall. “The wealth of talent and diversity of styles, genres, and instruments that we see at the Hole in the Wall makes it difficult to answer this question even if I were just to think about a particular month or week of seeing shows at the venue. There’s just so much cool stuff happening here all the time!” says the Hole in the Wall. Many remarkable artists showcase their talents at the Hole in the Wall, including a wide variety of artists to appeal to a diverse arrangement of music tastes. “Laurel Lee hosts La Femme Fridays every Friday during the daytime, and she showcases amazing female-identifying artists in town, like Cass Brostad, Lesly Reynaga, Mary Beth Widhalm, and Mandy Rowden. We also feature one of Austin’s finest young guitar players, Candler Wilkinson, every Sunday for three incredible hours after 11pm. We also saw John Doe on his return to Austin this year; Izzy Cox played on our historic front stage when she was developing her loungy punk sound we miss so much; and when Jello Biafra came through for the Evans John tribute earlier this year, he told one of our managers that he looks “like a handsome Roky Erickson.” In the future, the Hole in the wall plans on “Keeping the music live, the drinks cheap, the community satisfied.”
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How To Write A Song AN INTERVIEW WITH AUSTIN-BASED SONGWRITER, RICK BUSBY Story By: Ella Neff
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PHOTO BY VALERIE FREMIN
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3 1) STRUMMING HIS GUITAR, BUSBY PLAYS A SHOW AT THE ANDERSON MILL PUB. 2) BUSBY SMILES AT THE CAMERA AS HE SITS AT A PICNIC TABLE AT THE IRIE BEAN COFFEE SHOP. (PHOTO TAKEN BY ELLA NEFF)
2
1
3) “STRAWBERRY MOON” IS BUSBY’S SECOND ALBUM THAT FEATURES TEN OF HIS SONGS.
Rick Busby Shares His Story
T
wenty years ago, a struggling musician was battling severe depression after leaving his job in an entertainment company. Today, Rick Busby has two records out and on vinyl, a third one waiting to be released, regularly plays shows around Texas, and is working to go to ministerial school. Busby is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas. Growing up, he was surrounded by music. His father was a songwriter, and they lived in Nashville, Tennessee, when Busby was in first and second grade. Although Busby’s father was pursuing music, he sold Kirby Vacuum Cleaners during the day. “You always have to have a second job when you’re pursuing second job when you’re pursuing songwriting,” Busby said. “When I was growing up, I didn’t discriminate against genres, I just appreciated good songs, regardless of what genre they were from.” Busby began singing in a band when he was in high school. After travelling
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around and playing in clubs at night, he decided it was just too much. Busby quit the band after a few years and made the choice to go back to college at age 21 so that he could become a lawyer. However, before he ever made it to law school, Busby got an offer to join an entertainment company. “We went on the road, you know, did all that kind of thing,” Busby said. “Aspiring to be a rockstar, right? I just got burned out, I was just like ‘I can’t do this anymore.’” After leaving the band, Busby began to pursue a bachelor of arts in english. “My intention was to go to law school and become an entertainment lawyer,” he said. “Shortly before going to law school, I had an opportunity to work in a startup entertainment company. We had some measure of success, mostly in the film business, but we ran the music business as well.”
Around six or seven years after joining, Busby fell into a grave depression. “About my mid-thirties is when I started getting real burned out in the corporate world.” Busby said. “I got into it to be creative. What I was actually doing was managing lawyers and putting out fliers, doing all kinds of things, anything but being creative. I found myself in just sort of a midlife depression, like a severe depression. I didn’t even want to be in my own skin anymore.” However, this period caused Busby to reflect and think about what sparked his feelings of unhappiness. “I began to be aware about what I really wanted to do, began to be aware that I had put my own creativity on the back burner,” he said. “What I was doing instead was putting myself in service to other people who were creative, and that I was sort of living vicariously living through them. When I began to realize how I’d created my life this way
BUSBY PERFORMS WITH THE NUMBER 9 ORCHESTRA AT THREADGILLS, A POPULAR RESTURANT AND HOT SPOT FOR AUSTIN MUSICIANS.
and that I had [stifled] my own creative expression, I just let all of that go. I took my guitar, my acoustic guitar, and I just started writing songs. Just started writing about what was going on with me, what my hopes were, what my spiritual aspirations were, just writing for me.” Busby’s friends at the time had liked his music and decided to put up the money to help him produce a record. After the record came out, Lee Duffy, a woman on the board of directors for the Austin Songwriters Group, found it and asked him to join the group. Busby joined in 2003 and became the president in 2007. Busby describes the Austin Songwriters Group as creative, supportive, and a community. “Supportive is probably a big one,” Busby said. “The vast majority of people that have come here have come here looking for support. They found it, and then they became supportive because they found the support that they needed when they
showed up.” Creativity is a recurring theme in the ASG community. Most members are not professional songwriters or musicians, they are just people with a passion. “A lot of people’s stories are like mine,” Busby said. “They came back to [songwriting] later on in life after suppressing it in their young years to get a real job, you know, to do that kind of thing. I love that the energy and the spirit of creativity kind of never dies out. We can suppress it, we can cover it up, we can put it aside for a little while, but ultimately, that urge to be creative in your life is still going to be pushing through in your soul.” For Busby, the Austin Songwriters Group has given him a completely new and diverse group of people to connect and become friends with. “When you become a member in an organization such as ASG, you expose
HEADPHONES ON AND GUITAR IN HAND, BUSBY RECORDS A SONG AT EAR STUDIO. EAR STUDIO IS LOCATED ON EAST 11TH STREET IN DOWNTOWN AUSTIN.
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“We are created to be creative” -Rick Busby yourself to a whole range of songwriters, a whole range of human beings,” he said. “I know and love people now that I never would’ve intersected with otherwise. It’s a blessing, the number of people that I know and have as friends in life.” Busby is now on the path to enrolling in ministerial school and has been giving spiritual talks in churches around Texas. The philosophies that he preaches in these churches whave stemmed from the advice that he gives to the struggling songwriters and musicians he meets. Busby states that the odds of writing a hit song and becoming famous are about as good as winning the lottery. “It’s really really hard in this day and age to write to support yourself as a songwriter,” he said. “It’s just become increasingly difficult over the last ten, fifteen, twenty years to do so.
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So, it’s almost like the old economic class that was made of songwriters who could actually make a living doing songwriting, it’s a dying breed. If you’re attaching your progress to commercial prospects, you’re bound to be frustrated time and time again.” Instead, Busby says to write for yourself first. Write to express yourself and how you feel about things and issues, not to become a celebrity. “One of my core spiritual beliefs is that we are created to be creative,” Busby said. “That’s one of our core purposes. one of our core purposes. If we don’t have a creative outlet in our lives, our lives become dysfunctional. We become depressed, maybe even dependent on drugs or any other manner of thing to keep us away from the depression that we feel, so-to-speak,” he said.
“I learned first-hand that all that’s an illusion. I just realigned my life around making room for creative expression and the depression parts and all the kinds of things that were negative about my life, they all just fell away. And, even when they did surface, I could find a way to write about it. I could find a way to express it and that in itself was healing.”
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICK BUSBY UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED
PHOTO BY VALERIE FREMIN
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On Air Facts and stats about Austin’s radio scene Created By : Ella Neff
There are 87 radio stations within listening distance of Austin.
93.3 KGSR puts on well-known Alive music events such as Blues on the Green and
Unplugged at the Grove.
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The most popular radio stations in Austin are BOB FM (103.5), KKMJ (95.5), KUT (90.5), KASEFM (100.7), KISS FM (96.7), and KVET (98.1).
91.7 KOOP FM is 95% sponsored by community donations and run by volenteers.
Austin’s KASE FM (100.7) has been awarded the Country Music Association’s
“Station Of The Year” four times.
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Station Frustration
Find out what Local station is for you
Created by: Sajan Patel Is it Alternative?
What genre of music do you like?
Is it Electronic?
Is it Rock?
Is it Hip Hop/ Rap/ RnB?
Is it Pop?
Don’t have a preference?
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Listen to 101.5!
Listen to 98.9!
Listen to 93.7!
Listen to 102.3!
Listen to 93.3!
Listen to 94.7!
Top Hits of today
1. Bodak Yellow - Cardi B 2. Rockstar - Post Malone (Ft. 21 Savage) 3. Look what you made me do - Taylor Swift 4. 1-800-273-8255 - Logic (Ft. Alessia Cara & Khalid) 5. Despacito - Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee (Ft. Justin Beiber) 6. Unforgettable - French Montana ( Ft. Swae Lee) 7. Feel it Still - Portugal. The Man 8. Believer - Imagine Dragons 9. Rake It Up - Yo Gotti ( Ft. Nicki Minaj) 10. Sorry Not Sorry - Demi Lovato (From Billboard Hot 100)
Listen to 96.7!
Listen to 103.5!
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