Saturday, August 4, 2007

The Local Legacy of the Dave Matthew's Band

The paper I'm going to present at the ASAs next week started from a small seed - whenever I would interview local musicians in Charlottesville they would always bring up Coran Capshaw, the manager of Dave Matthews and CEO of several music companies. Sometimes their assessments looked at both sides of the coin - Capshaw, by locating his companies here and operating numerous venues and restaurants, has made the local music scene vibrant, but at the same time has stifled competition and marginalized genres outside of the college rock demographic. Sometimes musicians were just bitter, depicting Capshaw as the epitome of what is wrong with the music industry as a whole - monopolostic, top-down, pitting business against creativity and ensuring business the win.

I wanted to figure out what it is about Capshaw's presence in Charlottesville that creates this feeling among musicians. Does he really rob aspiring artists out of their life savings? Does he have mafia-like control over restaurant supply companies?

So I talked to workers, analyzed public company information, and gathered social histories of how his enterprise took shape. Without talking to the man himself, but talking to those affected by his companies, I came to this conclusion: Capshaw has not attempted to make Charlottesville into the next Austin, instead he uses the local space, particularly the consumer space of the downtown mall, as a testing ground for the national artists he promotes and sponsors. His workers, local musicians and listeners are consumers of his product, not producers. His product, ironically enough, is the desire to experience the dream of rock stardom and/or that special privilege of saying "I knew them when..."

In Charlottesville he's found a market - plenty of us dream of playing on stages graced by the more famous artists that he brings through and plenty of us (secretly or vocally) hope to run into Dave Matthews in the flesh and there are aspiring bands and musicians filling the ranks of local wait staff. Unless you can't stand DMB and college rock, you really can live the dream here.

Capshaw has created an incredible consumer base and infrastructure for music making in Charlottesville. DMB themselves, through their socially conscious foundation BamaWorks have contributed millions to youth and music education in their community. So where does this leave the grassroots local music scene? With people who participate in these organizations:

Rugged Soul Records
The Bridge PAI
Monkey Clause
Dust
Street Musicians
Twisted Branch
Tyrannosaurus Rock
Saxx
Music Resource Center (Funded in part by DMB)
Outback Lodge
Nailgun Media
WeArts
and many others...

Friday, August 3, 2007

Street Musicians


This evening I went out to gather still shots and audio of downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the case studies in my dissertation on local music scenes. I've been lucky enough to collaborate with two artists in town on documenting the scene through multiple senses: Tom Daly and Wendy Hsu

Tonight was a good night to be there - it was First Friday's, where all the galleries, restaurants that have turned into galleries, and stores that have turned into galleries open their doors to a new exhibit and free wine and cheese. It was also Friday's After Five, which is a concert series of local and family friendly music sponsored by a partnership between the city and local developer/music entrepreneur Coran Capshaw.

This, combined with good weather for eating sushi and drinking beer, meant that the downtown mall (a bricked in pedestrian walk in the center of town) was packed with revelers.

This also meant it was a prime night for street musicians to be heard and make some dough. I met James [pictured above], a percussionist who was playing a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a pair of worn in drum sticks. He transformed the bucket into a versatile drum, which he made boom and crack over the conversational din of the mall. He told me usually some of his friends come out to play with him but they were moving today and would be there next week. As I tucked a bill inside the Success Magazine he was using to hold his earnings, I asked him if I could take his picture and promised to send it to him via email. He was happy to oblige, telling me that people promise, but rarely follow through and he didn't yet have a picture of himself performing.

Local musicians are often more excited about the recognition than the money because sometimes the former is in shorter supply. Its even been documented scientifically.

James got me thinking more about what Charlottesville's music scene must be like for street musicians. Everyone here thinks of these musicians as an indicator of a strong music scene. James' only performances are out here, with this drum or sometimes with a hand drum. He knows that Fridays are the most worthwhile times to perform. He works the consumer culture of the mall as much as musicians who play in its bars and clubs after national acts play at the Charlottesville Pavilion.

Play on James.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Starting a Blog

Wendy and I have both been thinking for a long time that we should each create a blog. Should it be a blog of our band, our teaching, our research? Well Tanya, my friend and colleague, has inspired productive procrastination http://www.todissertation.blogspot.com.

This blog is still in the process of figuring out its identity...