Liner Notes continued: RIP We Shot JR
Say what you will about telling the truth. Honesty can be a nasty, thankless job. No one likes a wise-ass; good riddance We Shot JR. At least, that's the popular stance right now around town -- if the music blog criticized your band or your reporting.
Since the anonymously penned website announced its impending end, sometime in mid-to late October, much of the resulting local clamor has focused on just what We Shot JR got wrong. It's difficult to disagree with some concerns; no doubt the comments section could be juvenile. But, I can't help dwelling on everything the blog got right. Early, pre-hype-explosion interviews with up-and-coming groups (Grizzly Bear) and obscure oddities from all over, incessant videos of forward-thinking musicians, the most comprehensive list of concerts in town, releasing records by bands like Daniel Francis Doyle -- most other local blogs are still playing catchup.
We Shot JR passionately championed the underground like no one else around. Without those forever-unnamed writers, the history, and even the very existence of D-FW noise, hardcore, punk, and electronic music -- especially the performances and crowds surrounding house-venues like House of Tinnitus -- might have gone unrecorded, or remained a cursory footnote.
Embodying the candidness of a post-concert conversation among friends, writers like site-founder Stonedranger, analyzed local and national artists with the fervor and reasoning of a fan. They sounded like real people. In part, because We Shot JR had a rare luxury; their writers didn't have to answer to corporate bureaucracy or worry about burning bridges with anyone. They wrote about local music like they still had a stake in things, never afraid to say exactly what they thought.
With all of that in mind, I recently caught up with Stonedranger over Google chat. Some of the conversation was featured in this issue's Liner Notes column, but Allotted Space is a demanding mistress. For the the whole interview, including background information on SR, and reflections on the site, local music, and writing, read on my little lambs.
Q: I think the question on everyone's minds [now that the site is ending] is: Who the hell are you?
Stonedranger: Ha well I don't think we're going to just come out and say who we are, but a lot of people seem to know around town. The truth is that I'm no one special ... not a musician or someone that anyone in the music scene would really know if it wasn't for the website.
Q: How did the blog get started? Did you have any previous experience? Can you explain how everything came together?
SR: Well the idea for the blog started one day when I was driving around Dallas, the name popped in my headfirst and then I decided what it could be about... I was working alone for the first several months, and I didn't even tell my closest friends, even after some of them started reading it themselves... I worked briefly with one person and then I met DL [Defensive Listening] through a comment he posted on the blog and asked him to write about it via email, and that's how it all got started... eventually we got a few friends of ours to jump on board and help out. I had never written professionally before that time.
Q: Let's talk about journalism. The blog seemed firm in its stance that what better qualified you guys to write about music was that you weren't professional writers, just passionate, intelligent fans of music. What do you think about the current state of local 'music journalism'?
SR: Well I don't think that being an amateur necessarily makes you any better or any more honest per se, but I do feel like it helps people to identify with you a little more if you're simply just a fan of music going to shows like everyone else. However, aside from having to sell papers or ads, we very quickly ceased to be "just fans." I think because we were doing interviews and getting press access to shows and receiving free CDs and doing most other things that journalists were doing.
Currently, I think the sheer volume of local music coverage means that there is more variety, certainly more than there was when Weshotjr started. The quality of the writing varies quite a bit, though, and I think a lot of good things are still overlooked pretty regularly and a lot of bad things are still propped up due either to lack of information, poor taste or politics.
Q: What are your feelings on negative criticism?
SR: I think it's necessary if you're going to really help promote the good things in a music scene. There are some people around town who feel that the scene should be supported no matter what, but I think that attitude is reason why the scene was so stale here for so long. I really don't enjoy being a [expletive] to people who have worked really hard to make some music or put on a show, but I feel like if people don't know where you stand then they won't trust you, and if they don't trust you then you really can't help build a scene... we never went looking for people to attack or attacked some small band that no one had ever heard of, we just stated our honest opinions about bands when we felt it was relevant to do so.
Q: What do you think the biggest changes in local music have been since you first began the blog?
SR: Well I think there was a time, maybe between 2007 and 2009, when the city was really coming alive and when Denton was thriving... since then it seems that things have calmed down a bit again, like we're between eras. I guess the biggest change is that it no longer feels like Dallas is still stuck in the 90s, and at the very least the city is finally changing along with the times like everywhere else. And I also think the experimental and underground music scenes have grown and come together over the years, and to me this is the most important development
Q: Before starting the blog, what was your involvement like in the DFW music 'scene'?
Stonedranger: Pretty much nothing. I did know a couple people in a couple bands that haven't been around in years, and I went to a few shows here and there, but other than that none at all.
Q: What city were you living in here? Was there a particular genre you identified with over others?
SR: I was living in East Dallas when I started the blog. I'm not sure if there was one genre that I identified with, but I guess I felt like there was a whole world going on in underground music that wasn't be covered by the local media at the time. Maybe they WERE covering it and I just didn't see it, but based on what I read, it seemed like a lot of local music writers still thought it was the 90s, and I had been following underground music in general for a number of years and it just seemed like a lot of the changes that took place in the 00s hadn't impacted the way music was covered here.
Q: Funny, I've lived in East Dallas for 5 years. What do you consider 'underground music'?
SR: ha.... you must have arrived shortly after I did. Uh, well, I'll admit that "underground" is really an inexact term, but I use I suppose to refer to music that doesn't have much commercial appeal, but I also use it to refer to the subculture that sprouted up around the time of punk rock and continued through post punk, hardcore, college rock and 90's indie rock till today, no matter how different it might seem
Q: Have the writers met one another? Was the blog a collective effort, or was there a defined hierarchy?
SR: Yes, all the writers have met, but there was a time when that wasn't true. The blog was mostly a collective effort although myself and DL have the final word on content, etc
we work together on those decisions
Q: Is there anything you wished to accomplish that you were unable to?
SR: I would have liked to have found a way to make the website profitable so that we could pay people for their work and spend more time on it ourselves, but for a variety of reasons that never happened
Q: Was that related to the lack of advertising on the site? Would making the blog profitable have meant compromising integrity?
SR: Yeah we never really found a way to make advertising work for us. I'm not sure that it would necessarily compromise our editorial integrity, and of course we would have tried very hard to make sure it didn't, but it just didn't seem possible to generate enough money from advertising to make it worth cluttering our blog with ads or raising questions about our intentions
Q: It seems like a lot of the other press outlets in town shy away from almost anything that could be construed as negative. Do you have any idea why that is?
SR: You know, I've been trying to figure that out for a long time. Maybe they consider it a waste of space, or maybe they don't want to make enemies so that its easier to do business around town, or maybe they take some philosophical stance against it, I don't know, but I don't think you're doing your job if you aren't being critical when you feel like you should be.
Q: Do you think Weshotjr has left a lasting mark on the DFW 'scene'?
SR: I guess if anything, we demonstrated that if you're willing to put the work into it, you can almost instantly have a voice and make your presence felt within the local scene. I also think we helped force to Dallas people to pay attention to Denton a little more than they were before
Q: Is there anything you think people misunderstood about Weshotjr?
SR: I think a lot of people that disliked us seemed to think that we took ourselves WAY more seriously than we actually did or do, or think that we felt we were more important than we did. We tried to be pretty lighthearted about most things.
Q:How do you think local music writing affects the musicians who are written about?
SR: I think the writing can have very different effects depending on the substance and the source, so it's difficult for me to say. I know that we've written about some artists that have ended up getting a lot of [expletive] for it, seemingly motivated by jealousy, but I think overall, any publicity for a local band is good publicity.
