One Year In

This Saturday, December 15th, the Hometown Sounds internet music stream turns 1 year old. We’re celebrating with the first in a monthly series of showcases at the brand new venue 9th & Beats. It’ll be a rare afternoon show, from 1 to 7, featuring five great DC bands you may not have heard of yet: The Torches, Peanut Butter & Dave, The Grey Area, The North Country and Black Checker. This weekend there’s no cover charge, so I hope you’ll stop by, check out the new space and hear some great music.

I run this Hometown Sounds thing on pure love. My day job has nothing to do with music, and I’m very lucky that it affords me a little bit of time here and there during the day to run a DC Music Video of the Day post and send out some tweets. Most of the cool people I know in DC have a day job that pays the bills and provides the health insurance, and the evenings and weekends are spent at band practice or theater rehearsals or in the art studio or pecking away at the keyboard. A very select few make music their day job. For music, at least, I want to do what I can to connect ears to the hard working musicians in this town.

I started with the 24/7 music stream, available on computers and mobile devices (through the free TuneIn app) from day one. Next came the DC music video of the day posts. Some thought I’d run out of videos after a month or two, and I’ve still got a whole lot in reserves. Then the Hometown Sounds podcast, which does pretty decent numbers in the iTunes Store and on SoundCloud. And finally with what I’ve wanted to get into for months now, presenting and simulcasting live shows. All this to make it as easy as possible for people to hear DC music.

I think it’s great to be a fan of local bands. You get to see them play more often. You see their friends’ bands share bills, and maybe you like them too. Scenes occasionally pop up, like the Federal Reserve shows at Iota or the Fort Knox Recordings bands all remixing and guesting on each others’ tracks. You might even make friends with your local music idols, not a likely prospect with bands featured on KCRW or All Songs Considered. That’s why I think DC music is worthy of special attention.

Thank you for all the kind and positive words everyone has had for Hometown Sounds this past year. Please send feedback and suggestions to dj@hometownsoundsdc.com or chat with me at one of the monthly showcases. I know there’s a lot of great music coming in 2013 and I’m excited to share it with you.