So…D’y’all Like Local Music?
I have no doubt that the few people who have discovered this blog since we launched it less than a year ago are already familiar with The Thing - a one-day, multi-venue music festival featuring and highlighting local musical talent - that will be going down Saturday October 6th.
This will be our first Thing (though we recall hearing about it last year, but feel like we were out of town the weekend it went down). So it should go without saying, being huge fans of local music, that we’re pretty pumped about it.
In fact, the Thing reminds us a little of the humble beginnings of Fayetteville, Arkansas’ Block Street Block Party, which started as a small, kid-friendly festival along Block Street, with games, local artisan vendors, food trucks, local music, and lotsa booze (as Block Street was home to several local watering holes in our college town).
So the idea of hopping around from venue to venue has appeal. In our minds, we’re thinking this might be something akin to a SUUUUPER scaled-down South by Southwest, but with hometown appeal like the Block Street Block Party.
ANYWAY…
We’ve been doing our homework since launching The Strangers Almanac keenly taking notes on the Frederick music scene’s offerings. Recently, we decided to take playbook page from this one dude in Richmond VA who created a Spotify Playlist of local and regional Richmond punk/rock/indie bands that helped us learn the lay of the scene right after we moved there. It was a great resource during our short tenure in the River City.
Not long after moving to Fredrick, we became aware of The Frederick Playlist’s coverage of local music, and their role in bringing us The Thing…but we have yet to find a place where you can get a cache of local artists’ recorded output - including those performing at the Thing. The closest we got was this rad google sheet of local artists that was curated by Middle Kid’s Zack Willis.
That all said, we started with Zak’s list and began to cobble together a running playlist that not only includes some of our favorite local indie bands (i.e., Cheshi, Middle Kid, Jim Shorts, Flooring, Gloop, Mess, Mr. Husband, Cosmic Halitosis, J-Berd, Michael Nau, Double Motorcycle, Miss Lonelyheart, and Although), but also recently updated it to include some of the folks who will be performing at the Thing.
Ergo, if you’re anything like us, and simply seeing the name of a band only whets your appetite, then hopefully you’ll get some more gravy for your biscuits by listening to our berth of local talent through this playlist.
We’ve turned the “comments” on for this post, so please, let us know which local/regional Frederick artists who have a record on Spotify we are missing!
See y’all at the thing!