Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #04: Community
Episode Description
In this episode, hosts Dana Bollen (Two Week Notice Podcast / Touring Roadie) and Andrew Mall (Music Professor - Northeastern University) are joined by eight of our Season 1 panel members to discuss the communities that we build around D.I.Y. music scenes, as well as values that are essential within these communities.
Panel members for this episode include:
Norman Brannon (Thursday / Texas Is The Reason / Anti-Matter Zine)
Luke Garro (Piebald / Fastbreak / In My Eyes)
Ace Enders (The Early November / I Can Make A Mess)
Joey Chiaramonte (Koyo)
Brandon Davis (Vanna / Fever333 / Lions Lions / INSPIRIT)
Ali Lipman (Cape Crush / Moon Over Salem)
Johnny Grimes (Furnace Fest / Workplay Birmingham)
Episode introduction by Chad Johnson (Furnace Fest)
PLUS a cameo by Travis Shettel (Piebald) from Dana’s Two Week Notice podcast (full interview here: Spotify | Apple)
Episode Links
Or wherever you get your podcasts
Visit our linktree to learn more about our guests and contributors
Listen to music from our featured guests on the Live Free Or D.I.Y. Spotify playlist
Credits
Thank you for your contributions to this podcast:
Anthony Robbins (Research Assistance)
Ioanis Pintzopolous (Production Assistance)
Kira Burr (Graphic Design)
Todd Pollock (Cover photo)
Casey & Iodine Recordings
Piebald (podcast theme music)
Aaron Stuart (cover photo talent & legend)
Northeastern University (funding)
Episode Transcript
Chad Johnson: Without community involvement, you are guaranteed to fail.
Dana Bollen: Welcome to Live Free or DIY. My name is Dana Bollen. I am your co-host and alongside me, my co-host, professor Andrew Mall. Professor!
Andrew Mall: Hey Dana!
Dana Bollen: How's it going?
Andrew Mall: I'm good, man. How are you?
Dana Bollen: I'm great.
Andrew Mall: What are we talking about today?
Dana Bollen: We are going to talk about community in the DIY music scenes. Now, this episode in a lot of ways to me is the heart of this entire podcast series. We're going to get into -- along with our panel -- values that are essential to this community.
Andrew Mall: What are some of the core values that we're going to learn about today?
Dana Bollen: Great question. So we're going to talk about respect, acceptance, unity, being kind to one another, tolerance, open-mindedness, reliance, trust, being participatory, contribution, inclusion, lifting each other up, leading by example, mentoring, and collaborating.
Andrew Mall: Yeah, those are essential values in DIY music communities. At least two or three of those came up in every conversation we had with our panelists, and so I'm really looking forward to hearing them talk about what value is important to them in DIY music communities, and also how one goes about learning those values. I have this idea called "radical inclusion," and it seems so obvious, this idea that we include as many people as we can, and yet it's radical precisely because so many of us have had moments in our lives where we didn't feel included. In a lot of ways, it works against the tribal mentality of human society where we bound together and exclude others. And the DIY music scene, we bound together and include and bring more people together in ways that maybe disrupts or even reacts against the exclusion that we might have experienced elsewhere in other communities and other areas of our lives.
I think it's important to point out, Dana, that communities aren't passive collections of human beings, but rather they are social spaces that take work to accomplish. Communities take work, and that's something that we have to acknowledge and understand to make sure that our communities last beyond us. Because if we don't pass down that crucial bit of knowledge, then future people, future community members, might take our communities for granted. We don't want that to happen. So Dana, how is it that someone learns radical inclusion or unity or respect or any of the other values that you mentioned?
Dana Bollen: Well, Professor, I would simply say from each other, right?
Andrew Mall: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. We learn by doing. We learn by participating. We learn by singing along at shows. We learn by listening. We learn by reading fanzines and lyric sheets. All those are examples of learning from each other.
Dana Bollen: I have a question.
Andrew Mall: Yeah, Dana?
Dana Bollen: So we have a handful of people from our panel that we're going to hear from today. Who should we go to first?
Andrew Mall: I want to go to Luke Garro of Piebald in part because he lays out really, really clear how important it is that DIY music communities are as being the most open-minded, the most accepting communities possible.
Luke Garro: Are DIY communities accepting? Yes, absolutely. The nature of being DIY is that you want things that are being done in a different way. You want music that sounds different. You want people that are different from the mainstream. And every scene that I've been a part of felt very accepting. I've never felt out of place. I've never felt like I wasn't welcome somewhere, and that might've been the places I gravitated towards and the friends I made -- it just naturally, that's who I'd want to be around. And I'd even go as far as to say when there were instances of somebody acting outside of that open-minded nature, they would tend to get shunned and literally physically could be thrown out of places.
If somebody was, let's say, at a punk hardcore scene, there's moshing and stage diving and other stuff where people are going to physically connect. And a lot of the shows that I went at, it was done in a way where nobody was trying to hurt each other, but maybe if you came into that, you could look at that and go, "Okay, we're all just being violent," and then somebody crosses that line and starts hitting people or whatever, and you're like, "No, throw them out because they're not acting in a way that is fitting in with the culture here and they're just going to upset people." Any community that I've been part of has been very open-minded. I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot to not have that open-minded quality. I mean, it's all about being contrary to the mainstream and what better way to do that than to be completely open-minded. And I think I've been fortunate enough to be part of scenes that were always open-minded to me and anyone else.
It's about relying on people and trusting people. Then open-mindedness naturally is how you would need to be, to be willing to accept anybody and accept help from anybody and trust anybody. If DIY is supposed to be an alternative to the mainstream way of going about things, then one would naturally think that it's about being open-minded to the non-mainstream, being open-minded to the alternative, whether it's how music sounds or literally how people look, the color of their skin, their ethnic background, the way they act, what they say, their accent, anything, the way they dress. It should be the most accepting community out there because it literally is trying to be the alternative to a mainstream way of doing things.
Andrew Mall: Man, listening to Luke reminds me a lot of what we really want and deserve in our DIY music scenes. He's setting up this aspirational value that these should be the most accepting, most diverse places, not only for the kinds of music that we want to hear, but for who we are: for our identities. Being a part of a DIY music scene is learning those values. And throughout the episode today, Dana, we're going to be hearing from our interviewees about what those values actually are. We're going to hear from Joey next, and one of the things that he talks about is how it feels as a newcomer to the scene.
Dana Bollen: Joey Chiaramonte, Koyo.
Joey Chiaramonte: It's complicated because it's a greater question in the way of -- in essence, yes, everyone should feel comfortable being able to take a crack at this type of stuff. Everyone should be able to come through the door and try their hand and see if it's something they like and if it's for them. That's totally valid, especially with young people because that's presumably the demographic that needs something like that. But it's complex in the way of these subcultures, these DIY scenes, these music scenes, really any subcultural setting, it's not always going to be for everyone. Even when they try their hand at it, they might not fall in love. They might not feel comfortable. And I think there's things that implicitly are uncomfortable about it. Like you go to a VFW hall show to see bands you may have discovered one way or another. The hope is that people will be inviting to you. And I've seen many instances in my life -- and, positively, I've had people do the same for me in the way of, they immediately recognize that they don't recognize you and make a point in introducing themselves, trying to invite you in, trying to help get you a little acclimated, make some friends and whatnot. But that's not always the case.
I remember going to, I had friends who I'm still tight with from high school, I went to shows with people in Koyo and we found our way in together. But there were shows that I went to essentially alone and would lean on the couple people that I knew there. I knew some people via townie stuff, people that went to the same school district as me, so I could go say hello, talk, whatever, whatever. But a lot of that early time is spent going because you love the music so much that it's okay that you don't really have any friends there. And I know that's not the most positive reality, but that is part of the deal with things like subcultures and DIY music scenes and whatnot, is you are presumably going there because the music itself is so magnetic to you that you need to be there for that. And all the comfort that comes with being social and making friends and having a group of people to lean on, I do think that comes naturally, but it's not a guaranteed thing through the door.
So the best thing I imagined someone could do is do the things that positively resonated with me and other people. And it's not an obligation, it's not like an absolute must, but be the person that taps the shoulder of the newer kid sometimes, when you can. Be the person that introduces yourself, takes note when someone's new through the door. It's intimidating to put yourself out there, but I'm sure the person who's intimidated by a new and potentially abrasive space would appreciate it.
I think universally the big thing is a lot of it's trial by fire, kind of like we were saying earlier. A lot of it is just walking into a room where you don't know anybody and accepting that you don't know anybody and trying to stick around. And eventually all those things lock into place. But through that, I think obviously different artists stand for different things and people will preach how they feel to you, and you might not always identify with how people feel about certain things or certain issues, but you learn to form strong opinions even if you don't particularly feel entitled to voice them. You learn to believe in yourself and believe in your own feeling, and I think that's very valuable. And I do think, again, on the basis of what we're talking about earlier where it's like, oh, the DIY, the belief that you can in fact do things, the fleeting thoughts that cross your mind -- Can I put out this record? Can I book the show? Could I go on tour? -- things that you would otherwise at a preconceived level doubt yourself and cut out of your own life, you can. I think you learn that in those settings. I think you learn by small talk with the dude at the little distro table in the basement of a VFW hall. It's like you learn, yeah, you can just figure out how to fumble around Photoshop and make a CD layout and put out this demo for a band just so they have some CDs to sell at a show. Even if you lose a couple hundred bucks on it. You learn that not only you can do these things, but you learn that you also do it for the culture more than anything else. You do it for yourself, you do it as a, "I did something awesome," not necessarily because it's an avenue to make money or get any type of approval from peers.
Those things are nice when they happen, but that's not the reason you do any of it. I think in total, whatever confidence I do have comes almost in totality from that. I was never a particularly shy guy, but I wasn't totally extroverted or anything like that. And as a kid, I definitely was a little on the weirder side. I had nerdier interest and I wasn't a super athletic type. Me and all my friends kind of sat in our own weird little lane where we liked a lot of everything. We liked a whole variety of stuff in life, but we didn't hard fall into any one pocket of our peers. And I think as a byproduct, I wasn't the most out there or confident guy. And I think whatever confidence I do have largely comes from what was gained in this more subcultural settings.
Andrew Mall: Joey from Koyo, and I love hearing from that guy talking about the participatory nature of do-it-yourself music communities. And here's where I really want to contrast do-it-yourself music communities against other forms of entertainment. Other forms of entertainment are "presentational," right? We are in the audience, whether it's at an arena, we're sitting on our couch watching Netflix, we're sitting in our chair listening to Spotify. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, it's presentational. You are a receiver, you are a consumer. But in DIY music communities, we are not consumers, or rather, we're not only consumers. We participate in making those scenes what they are. And what Joey is reminding me here, Dana, is that even first-timers to shows, we're exposed to things that we can then do ourselves. Whether we're making demos for our friends' band, whether we're sitting at the merch table, whether we're helping set up the show, whether we're learning how to run sound, whether we're taking photographs, hell, whether we're doing hand percussion on stage. Dana, how did you get involved doing the work that you're doing? You didn't go to college to be a tour manager or a merch guy or a cowbell player or a podcast host. How did you get involved doing this stuff?
Dana Bollen: I left my corporate job that I had for a decade. I was really miserable. And I saved up some money and set myself up, but that only lasts so long. And I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no plans, and somehow I ended up in this world that we're in now. And I got to where I'm at right now by showing up and participating. I can't play guitar, I can't tune a guitar, I can't do sound, but you know what? I can drive a truck and I have a positive attitude. That's really important too. I can sell merch. I had a background in business. I was managing 60-plus Panera Breads for a decade, so you know what? That would probably make a good tour manager. So I think it's just showing up and contributing in any way possible. If you like taking pictures and you have a camera and you don't know how to get into being a photographer, just go to shows, bring your camera, talk to people, and it's going to work out. If you want to start a podcast, start a podcast. Cool stuff's going to happen. Or maybe you'll start a podcast and maybe that's not for you, but you won't know if you don't try it. I just think everyone has value. Everyone has something to bring to the table.
Andrew Mall: I love your story, Dana, and I love how hardcore, punk, DIY has played such a strong role in your life in the last many years. One of the things that we're going to hear from Ace Enders is that people in these scenes, they often work together. Going back to an earlier episode, we were talking about how DIY music scenes aren't necessarily about doing everything by yourself. It's do-it-together. It's another value that we should put a pin in here and hold on to. Ace Enders from The Early November.
Ace Enders: I think each scene or each area of this music world, DIY scene, whatever you want to call it, has their own set of ethics and whatnot and set of things that they pass on to the younger generations and what they should pick up from it. All I know is for me, what I picked up from it was very much how to, let's say, exist with respect while trying to also do the same thing. Also trying to compete with someone. So I think that's a really hard thing to learn, and there's not an easy way to learn that other than by watching people act courteous to each other while knowing that they're trying to do the same exact thing as the person sitting across from them and trying to do it a little bit better, but at the same time, you're still trying to -- you're watching them try and do it while lifting the other person up.
That's why we saw so many bands, I think in this early 2000s, all tour with each other so many times. Because as one got bigger or as one started to play more exciting shows, they would bring their friends with them, and they would lift up almost the entire scene or whoever they possibly could. I know that that's something that we tried to do when we could do it, and I think that is a really valuable lesson: is how to pick people up around you without making them feel like you are above them. And that is a delicate dance, but that's a really important lesson.
Dana Bollen: I love what Ace said there about bands taking care of each other and picking each other up. It's just a beautiful thing, Professor.
Andrew Mall: Yeah, I love that story. I think it's a really good example of bands cooperating and working together and using what they have in order to support other bands in the scene and sometimes even the scene itself. Ace is talking about cooperation and about supporting each other. And he's also talking about interpersonal relationships, about being courteous. That's a value that people are learning in these scenes as well. How to care for each other. There's a literal way to interpret what he said at the end there about picking other people up. When we fall down in the mosh pit or when we stage dive and don't make it all the way we pick people up. We expect to be lifted up off the ground, dusted off, maybe escorted to the side to catch our breath. That's one of the ways that we care for people at shows that can often get really rowdy. And sometimes those reminders are coming directly from the stage, from the singers and the band members reminding us that, "Yeah, have fun, run around stage dive. This stage is your stage, but make sure you pick people up." We're going to hear next from Ali Lipman of Cape Crush and Moon Over Salem who reminds us actually that maybe more singers, more musicians could be teaching us those values.
Ali Lipman: I think that we do a kind of silent pass down of our values to younger people as they get involved in the community. I think when you have those little moments, whether it's with a stranger or with somebody that you respect, you gain a lot of that tribal knowledge that comes from being in a community. If young people, young musicians, people who love music don't have an opportunity to see it when they're high schoolers, then when they go to college to study music and be musicians or when they start joining bands, they're not really going to know what to do at a show, and that's not their fault. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be welcome. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't book their band. I think we need to take some responsibility maybe as scene elders, maybe we don't have enough hardcore front men standing up there with their microphones telling everybody what it means to be in the scene anymore.
I think that DIY, that punk tends to be -- in terms of social values -- tends to be one step ahead of society. So we're always trying things on before society does, trying on how do we get more people involved, how do we diversify our bills and really make sure that minorities, people of color, women feel safe in our scenes. We were doing that before #MeToo happened and watching what that looked like, watching the successes, but also how those attitudes can be taken to an extreme and actually end up excluding people as well. So it's an interesting social experiment, almost like a petri dish for what society is going to try on next when it comes to being a more welcoming, diverse place on this planet Earth that we all live in.
Dana Bollen: One big element to these DIY music scenes or just any show in general, there are people up there on a stage with microphones with up to thousands of people captivated, hanging onto every music note, every word that's being sung. But in between these songs, oftentimes, especially in the hardcore scene, people have a lot to say. There's a lot of preaching that goes on. You look at Aaron Bedard of Bane, that dude has been preaching positivity since the nineties. It's so beautiful. So bringing it back to community and tolerance, one of my favorite stories: Vinny Caruana. A couple years ago I'm at an I Am the Avalanche Show in Cambridge, Mass. During the set, there were these two kids who were obnoxiously moshing. They weren't crowd killing, but they were doing the thing where they hold each other's hands and swing each other around and just crashing into people to the point where it was literally ruining the set for everyone except for those two people.
There was no mosh pit. These dudes were just being assholes, essentially. The focus became on those two even more than the band, it was so obnoxious. And Vinny stopped the show, sits down on the front of the stage, and he goes, "You, you, come here." These two dudes walk over to the stage. Vinny puts the microphone down, and he like huddles up with these dudes. He puts one arm around each of them. I didn't hear what he said, but I know what he said. "Cut the shit. You can't be doing this. You're ruining this for everybody." And you don't always see that, but that always stuck with me. So I think that's an example, like going back to what Ali said of a veteran in the scene who's been doing this since the nineties, knowing when to step in and lay down the law, if you will. Going back to the beginning of this, the first clip we heard from this panel was Luke talking about people being shunned. Vinny didn't shun them, but he handled it perfectly. And you know what? They stopped acting up after that.
But sometimes I wonder if these musicians up there with microphones, Professor, I wonder what kind of pressure they might feel sometimes. Because there is definitely something that goes along with just standing on a stage in front of people with a microphone. And aside from the extreme example that I just gave with that story about Vinny Caruana, not everyone necessarily has the personality of an Aaron Bedard of Bane or Patrick from Drug Church. And that's okay, and I wonder if they feel pressure. Some people are just introverted and they just want to go up and be masters of their craft and play music because they want to be distracted from whatever it is that other people might preach about. They just want to play music. But I do wonder if some people feel a certain pressure because if you just look at it sociologically, you're up there on a stage with a microphone, everyone's looking at you. I don't know. I think about these things because there is an opportunity there to say some powerful stuff in between the songs. Maybe these people feel like they have to say something, but it shouldn't all be on them. It takes a village, right? What do you think, Professor?
Andrew Mall: Yeah, I think you're right, Dana. First of all, there's always the danger of being someone who's disciplining the crowd and maybe even talking condescendingly to them for not behaving in certain ways. There's all these stories about Fugazi just really preaching to the crowd about how you're not supposed to mosh and do any of this stuff, and it was like crowd killing from the stage. "Just don't do any of that stuff." And that band was thought of as not being any fun, sometimes not having a good sense of humor. But there's also this idea, and I think you're absolutely right about this, that not everyone is comfortable or confident teaching from the stage, telling people how to behave or encouraging people to behave in particular ways. And it's not only on the band. You're absolutely right. Dana takes a village. It's probably why you and I are doing this.
Dana Bollen [Furnace Fest ad read]: Hey folks, just want to take a minute to talk about the best festival of the year: Furnest Fest in Birmingham, Alabama. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, October 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Headliners are Jimmy Eat World, Dropkick Murphy's, Knocked Loose. But that does not even scratch the surface of the insanity that is this year's Furnace Fest lineup. I'm just going to rattle off a few: Saves the Day, Mom Jeans, Texas Is the Reason, Drain, Speed, Kublai Khan, Comeback Kid, Citizen, Biohazard, Microwave, madball, Spanish Love Songs, Less Than Jake, Say Anything, I Am the Avalanche (my dudes!), Ten Yard Fight, Converge. There's like a hundred bands, not to mention the plethora of pre-festival shows and afterparty shows. My favorite, I will absolutely 100% be there: Unearth, On Broken Wings, and Chamber. It's going to be a ripper, dude. You do not want to miss this festival. Three day passes starting at just 300 bucks. This is an insane deal. Prices will go up, so get your tickets at this price while you can. Plus there are VIP options, parking options, and so much more. Go to Furnacefest.us for tickets and more information and make sure to join the Furnace Fest Community Facebook group.
Andrew Mall: We're going to hear from Johnny Grimes next. He's one of the organizers behind Furnace Fest, which is bringing hardcore and punk back to Birmingham, Alabama for a three-day festival since 2021. And in our interview, he spoke a lot about values of unity and tolerance. A lot of the same ways that we've heard Aaron Bedard and other people speak from the stage. And to hear Johnny talk about it really clarifies for me, Dana, that sometimes it comes from the stage and sometimes it comes from the organizers of the whole event, that tolerance and unity, it's not only what we want in our crowd, it's what we want the entire weekend. It's really important to hear from him about that.
Johnny Grimes: Unity doesn't necessarily mean that everybody within the scene believes exactly like you or looks exactly like you. That's not what unity is at all. And then that's not what the scene actually, I think demands of people. I think the scene demands of people is for people to be themselves, to be as unique and as individualistic as they possibly can, while understanding that what's the common glue here is an unwavering commitment to acceptance and a commitment to, at a bare minimum, getting to know people and understanding who they are and why they believe certain ways they believe. And then having mutual respect as long as those principles and ideals and beliefs don't necessarily infringe upon my beliefs or doesn't necessarily say that I have to do this that way because you believe that way.
And so unity doesn't mean no push and pull, no rub, no grind. It doesn't mean that at all, but it does mean that we're ultimately committed to each other because we are part of this scene in this subculture of life. And so tolerance is a two-way street. Mutual respect for one another is a must. And if we have those two principles in mind, it doesn't matter if somebody's a Christian or an atheist or a Buddhist or a Hindu or Muslim or it doesn't matter the sexual orientation or gender or whatever. It doesn't, none of those things matter. What matters is is that we're humans, and we're committed to getting to know each other, love each other, support each other despite our differences.
Dana Bollen: All right, Professor. Johnny just said that so perfectly, talking about unity and tolerance. And I think another value we need to talk about real quick is camaraderie. Whether it's people in the crowd vibing together, singing along to their favorite bands, or bands themselves on tour, grinding it out in the van for two months on no sleep, sleeping on floors when they do sleep, and just in the trenches together. Camaraderies is all we have at the end of the day, in a way. It brings all of us together, whether you're behind the merch table, you're behind the soundboard, you're drum teching, you're up there singing, you're bartending, you're scanning tickets or you're attending a show.
Andrew Mall: I've never gone on a tour with a band, Dana. This is like me learning from you, actually. I've never slept on people's floors for weeks at a time. And yet hearing all the stories of the bands that have been doing that, that have done that, helps me understand that the little bit of contribution that I can make to the scene can go a long way towards helping bands do what they do.
Dana Bollen [Two Week Notice clip]: Hey folks, if you like this podcast, then you will definitely dig the Two Week Notice podcast. For those of you who don't know, I host another podcast where I interview musicians in the DIY, hardcore, punk, emo, the scene. That show is called the Two Week Notice podcast. You could find the link to the Two Week Notice podcast in the show notes of this episode that you are listening to right now. Or go on your preferred podcast platform and type in "Two Week Notice." It's the one with the peace sign. And I think it would be very fitting to play a few clips from Two Week Notice right now on this show to give you an idea of the vibe that is Two Week Notice, this particular clip is very pertaining to this discussion on community that we are having right now. So here's a clip from my interview with Travis Shettel, front man of Piebald.
The scene right now, hardcore, emo, It's like bigger than it ever was, it seems.
Travis Shettel: Yeah, I think I'm going to agree with you, and I don't know quite what's caused that, but I'm guessing that people who were teenagers and 20-somethings in the early 2000s are now 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds, and they're adults who are working, maybe have kids of their own, and look back on the early 2000s with an awesome fondness and sort of like a, "Hey, this is what we were doing when we were young, literally, and here it is again." And it was powerful enough to have staying power, which I think surprised a lot of us, but it's really cool seeing it be as big as it is today. When we were just, I think pretty much I can speak for a lot of people saying, we were all just kids hacking around, having fun with our friends and learning how to make music in the late 90s. And now it's our scene of hardcore, punk, emo, indie rock, whatever, has totally become something way bigger than it was when we first found it.
And I do think it's probably bigger than it ever has been. And yeah, I'm happy we have a place in it at all. If we were the only band at that time, we wouldn't have made a big splash. But it's because there was a community of bands that toured together and were like-minded, but didn't all sound exactly the same, but certainly had overlaps. And just somehow our community made something really special that has resonated much longer than any of us anticipated. I realize that it's a pretty magical thing and it's special. And if it doesn't say something about Piebald in my obituary when I die, I'm going to be goddamn shocked, right? Because it is part of me and I am part of it.
Dana Bollen: Make sure to check out the Two Week Notice podcast on most podcast platforms or just follow the link in the description of this current podcast episode.
I have a question, Professor.
Andrew Mall: Yes, Dana?
Dana Bollen: Have you ever attended a show by yourself?
Andrew Mall: I go to shows by myself a lot, actually. When I was younger, I hated doing it. I felt really out of place. Aand now I guess I'm secure enough to have a good time. I saw Touche Amore a month ago, went by myself. It was awesome.
Dana Bollen: Did you feel alone?
Andrew Mall: God, no. Not at all. You cannot feel alone when you're surrounded by people all there for the same thing,
Dana Bollen: And I'm in the same boat as you. Maybe it's just a phase of life where I go to shows by myself all the time. I can't tell you the last time that I got in a car with someone and went to a show with them. I don't even know. It's been years. I don't even think about it anymore. I just go, I show up. Sometimes I'll maybe text with a homie or two that I know is going to the same show and we're going to maybe plan to meet up there, but oftentimes that's not the case. But I know I'm going to run into familiar faces, bump into some homies, or maybe not, but maybe make some new friends. Or maybe I'm not feeling social at all. Sometimes that's the case, but I just want to go there and see a band that I love and just take in some live music. And maybe I don't talk to anybody that night, but I can tell you the camaraderies is still there. So we're going to hear from Brandon Davis next of Vanna, Fever 333, Lions, Lions, and Inspirit. Brandon talks about camaraderies and collaboration.
Brandon Davis: I think overall, at least in Massachusetts, everyone is really trying to work together to begin with. And if you go into it understanding that, I think your life will be a lot easier. For example, in the early 2000s -- and truthfully even to this day, this still happens -- but in the early 2000s, all the bands would talk to each other prior to the show. And we would all say -- say there's five bands, it's like, "Hey, we're all playing a VFW or Knights of Columbus. The capacity is 300 people, so it really doesn't make any sense for all of us, all five bands, to bring five bands' worth of equipment to this building." So we would all text, like, "Okay, how about one band brings a stage right guitar cab. Another band brings a stage left guitar cab. Another band brings a bass cab. And one band brings the drum set. And any breakables for the drums, you bring that stuff just so don't have to get stuck paying for somebody's expensive stuff that you broke."
And by working together as a scene, we were able to eliminate changeovers. I don't know what kind of people are listening to this podcast, but if any normal people that aren't show people are listening, a changeover is the time between a band's set. If the opening band plays and they get off stage, there's usually a 10- or 15-minute changeover because all the equipment has to be switched. So, by us using the same equipment for the whole entire show, it eliminates changeovers. This is our way of working together to keep the show on time. That was something that I learned really early on: "Wow, we're all working as a team." And it taught you that that's the right way to do it, as opposed to selfishly being like, "Well, no, I want to use my cab. I don't care about what happens at the show."
And it's like, "Well, dude, this isn't about you. This is a show that has five bands on it, so you are using what everybody else is using, or you can go home." You know what I mean? So our scene here in Massachusetts, it all taught us about efficiency and how to work together as a team to make the show go smoothly. And also the less equipment in the room, the more people can fit in it. These were things that we all thought about and we would all talk to each other before we even got there. And then when we all got there, every band would help bring the gear in together. You know what I mean? So it was like everything went super smoothly, everything goes fast, and we still do that today. For example, Inspirit is about to play three shows this upcoming weekend. And I've already texted all the bands being like, "You guys can use our backline. Don't bring anything to the show. These are small venues. It'll all be set up for you. We're going to load it in, bring your heads, plug into our stuff, and it's like minimal changeovers changing over only drums, stuff like that."
Dana Bollen: Alright, so Brandon Davis right there just gave us a beautiful example of a DIY show and the camaraderies that just makes everything better. I love the story about all the bands sharing gear. That covers a few values. We got the camaraderies, we got inclusivity, making sure everyone's included and involved, all the bands working together. And then I love the part at the end, Professor, because he just played a show. So at this point in that story, he's in the scene playing in bands for 20 years at this point, and he took the initiative to lead by example and pass on this knowledge to maybe these younger people or these newer bands by saying like, "All right, so I just called everybody and this is how it's going to go down."
Andrew Mall: So I loved hearing him talk about how he is cooperating with other bands and he didn't really talk about this, but it also helps cement those relationships between musicians, which can actually result in artistic collaboration and artistic cooperation. I think that's a great idea. He's also talking about mentorship and leadership. He's not really using those words, but think back to Ali Lipman talking about the silent pass down of values. Man, Brandon Davis is not silent about this from being involved in the scene for a couple decades now. He is someone that younger bands are looking up to. He is someone that he's turning to other musicians and saying, "Hey, you know what, here's how we've been doing things and I think this is really important to continue doing." So to hear him describe how he models that for other bands is really, really valuable. Dana, we're going to go back to Brandon because he also spoke with us about inclusion and what it means to feel accepted in a community as a person of color, as someone who maybe doesn't visibly fit in if more people are white than they are not white. So let's go back to Brandon Davis, hear what he has to say about inclusion and diversity.
Brandon Davis: Going to shows in the early 2000s, most of the time I was the only Black person, especially at a VFW hall or a small club that I'm going to see a pop punk show or a metalcore show or a hardcore show. Most of the time I was the only Black person there, and I never received any sort of racism, at least not openly to me. So it was a very inclusive scene, but I think that's by design. I think punk and hardcore, a lot of it has its roots in anti-racism and anti-fascist mentality. That's what it's for. There were groups of people in Boston that were beating up Nazis in the 80s and 90s, and sadly even early 2000s. So I think punk and hardcore was really designed as an accepting place for anybody who's normal. Like, racism and sexism and homophobia, that's never been punk rock. It's like, for how many years have we seen the swastika patch crossed out? We've seen that at every single show for the past 20 years. You know what I mean? It's very clear that the do-it-yourself music scene, as a whole, is designed to be anti-racist. So I didn't really experience any of that stuff for the most part. Now obviously sometimes there's snakes in the grass, there's weirdos that weasel their way in, and for the most part, those people get exposed and they get exiled. So my personal experience as a minority in this music has been a positive one.
Andrew Mall: Hearing from Brandon talk about his experiences about the DIY communities, about punk communities being anti-racist at their core, about being a welcoming environment for everyone. It's so important to hear from people who that directly impacts in part because it sets us all up for success. "Here's why being anti-racist matters. Here's how it makes our scenes stronger, our communities better. Here's how it improves all the things we've been talking about today, the cooperation, the collaboration, the unity, the respect is just hugely, hugely important."
We're going to turn for our final interview to Norman Brannon, currently playing with Thursday, but he's played in a bunch of bands and writes the zine Anti-matter. He also has a lot of insight into how people are learning the values when they first enter scenes, and his insight draws from his own experiences growing up in New York in the 1980s, as he mentioned, someone who is Latino background and is also queer, but not out when he first entered the scene. So his perspective is important, Dana, because it reflects the specific set of experiences and circumstances in the 1980s. And here's what I want to remind listeners. In the 1980s, the queer community in New York was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. It was something that political leaders and the medical establishment turned a blind eye to. So Norm Brannon's experiences growing up, as someone who knew that he was queer and was meeting queer people and learning from them, is colored by losing them. So where he sits now, in his 50s, as someone who's been involved in hardcore and DIY music for decades, someone who has the ability to give back, has the ability to continue working with people who are new to the scene, maybe new to their own identities, and from the perspective of someone who feels that responsibility precisely because those people were not available due to the AIDS epidemic. Norm Brannon.
Norman Brannon: I know that for me -- and this is partially because of the era in which I grew up in and partially because of where I grew up, which was New York City -- I learned the culture of hardcore ultimately by leaving my house and going to shows and meeting people who are older than me. It's not like there were hardcore lessons or hardcore school or something like that, but every day I'd go to a show and every day I'd learn something new. Every day I'd learn not to fucking talk shit to that one guy. Or every day I'd learn that we respect our elders around here. Or every day I'd learn that maybe contributing something is a good way of getting respect in our community. There were always lessons that were sort of being learned just by virtue of being there and then eventually participating. Because I do think that hardcore is a participatory culture.
I am a huge proponent of intergenerational conversation. And I learned this -- and this sort of became a sort of tent pole for me in terms of my own relationship with hardcore -- because of my involvement with the queer community. The queer community taught me how important it was to have elders. And partially this is because an entire generation of especially gay males were essentially killed by AIDS in the 80s. And so there was a generation, and I'm sort of in that younger generation where a lot of the men who didn't survive would have been elders to me. The first two gay men I ever met was an older couple who both died of AIDS. And so understanding, number one, how important those conversations would have been for me, and two, sort of how much being there matters because we lost them. We had no choice but to lose that generation, unfortunately. But now that I have a choice to sort of make myself available, I want to make that choice, and I want to be there for younger people who want to know something.
And, let's be real, I want to know about them, and I want them to continue this community in their way: to put their stamp on it, to do their shit. Because I don't know how much longer I have left. This is theirs. You have to give people a chance to find themselves inside of a group of people, inside of a community, and inside of an idea. And it took me a while to find myself, to get to a place where I could contribute to the community in a way that was meaningful and take a position that mattered, I guess, on some level, beyond just being a dumb kid, throwing punches in the pit. And I feel like that gatekeeping mentality, that idea of some people not being enough of a thing to be a part of this community is something that I constantly fight back against. I kind of feel like the idea of castigating someone for being "not cool" in a scene full of not cool people is completely ridiculous. And if you think you're that cool, you don't belong in this scene, because this is a scene for misfits and fuckups.
When I think about acceptance, I think that that is a little bit complicated because there are a million ways in which at least my community has grown in terms of, not just acceptance, but actually visible confirmation of that acceptance. There are two things. So one is that there's obviously the fact that this community is and has always been a very majority white male community. And as a queer person of color, that was a weird thing for me to get into. I wasn't out in 1986, but I was still Latino. Everybody still knew that. And there were still elements of my life that I was sorting out, that I did have to question and sort of interrogate myself as to whether or not I was running away from something, or trying to figure out what it was about this community that attracted me so much that didn't seem to attract other people like me. And I think that was a personal journey that I had to of go on. But over the years, the demographics have just changed. And at this point, when you go to a show and -- forget about the crowd, just looking at the bills -- now you're seeing all sorts of people of color, all sorts of queer people, trans people, non-binary people, women. It's just a lot more well-rounded and reflective of the world that we actually live in. And more importantly, of the ideals that we've been espousing since the beginning, which has been about unity and diversity and sort of appreciating our differences and breaking down the walls. And now all of a sudden we're starting to see that.
Dana Bollen: All right, and that wraps up today's episode of Live Free Or DIY. On the next episode, we are going to do a deep dive on mental health within the DIY music scenes.
Andrew Mall: So join us next time on Live Free Or DIY.
[Credits roll] Live Free Or DIY is co-hosted by myself, Andrew Mall.
Dana Bollen: This show is also co-hosted and produced by Dana Bolen, editing assistance from Ioanis Pintzopolous
Andrew Mall: Research assistance and production assistance by Anthony Robbins. Funding provided by Northeastern University
Dana Bollen: Graphic design by Kara Burr. Cover photo shot by Todd Pollock. Podcast theme song brought to you by Piebald and Iodine Recordings. Head on over to Iodinerecordings.com for very special anniversary vinyl represses from bands such as Piebald, Fastbreak, Quicksand, Further Seems Forever, Stretch Armstrong, as well as incredible new artists signings, The New Scene podcast, and so much more. That's Iodinerecordings.com. And lastly, if you enjoyed the show, make sure to rate, subscribe and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram. You can find links to everything in the show notes of this very episode.