I was sitting at Toad over the weekend enjoying some truly
fine music from some great musicians and was thinking to myself, I really wish
I could just let everyone in the world know about ALL of the wonderful musicians
from this city. I wish I could make it my life’s work to cast a light upon
those musicians who are out rocking every night for 17 bucks and a beer, the
songwriter who you won’t hear on the radio but writes incomparably better than 90%
of the garbage you will likely hear on terrestrial radio, and those people who live
for collaborating and creating a space for people to just “feel” the music. I wish that I could just build a perfect music community, give everyone incredible full house gigs where every member is listening to their songs, or claps at every solo. I
wish I could tell you all about every single wonderful musician in this town and recognize them deservingly, but sadly I cannot. I
am one person and it would be extremely tough even if I quit my day job to do
so. So, I will just do the best I can for now.
The past couple weeks of having nominees float in has been
interesting to say the least. There are a lot of people on the ballots who I
was fully expecting a flood of nominations to roll in for (and they did), some
that I was surprised to hear brought up, and some I was sad to not have at
least 2 nominations for to include in one of the categories. Regardless, I am
very happy with the outpouring of support that you all have for one another. It
is truly humbling and a beautiful thing to witness.
I do want to say that I played this as fairly as I possibly
could. I stuck to the “must have at least 2 noms” rule very strictly. I took
the community’s input rather than my own, or a committee of “music industry
buffs”, or anything along those lines. I hate to be the jaded local picker or bad
mouther, but I despise seeing the same people nominated for ill-adapted, out of
place categories every year. Or see “the award director favorites” always seemingly end up on
a ballot regardless of whether or not they may have released an album or even
played in town in the last 8 months.
If you weren’t included and think you
should be, I am sorry. If you think someone else should have been included that
you nominated, I am sorry as well, but as previously mentioned I stuck to that “2
fer” rule pretty tight. And if you nominated yourself, then I am sorry because
you clearly do not get the point of this blog and its ideals.
I started this whole blog thing 9 months ago because I felt
that there was an unmet need to draw attention to great local roots/folk music
in the NorthEast. These are YOUR awards. No, f*ck that, they aren’t awards,
they are recognitions of your peers for being amazing and talented in what they
do. I hope that it at least shines a little more light on those independent
artists who I am tremendously grateful to share a community with every single
day.
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