Uncategorized

Bandcamp: Vermont musicians find a home

By Art Edelstein
Arts Correspondent
Vermont musicians may not currently be able to perform for a live audience, and there are fewer and fewer record stores selling compact disc recordings. As a result, musicians are turning to online sales sites, and a favorite among Vermonters is Bandcamp.

We recently searched the site for musicians from Vermont and found nearly 100 matches. Some of the bands and singles listed are fairly well known, with Bow Thayer, Sam Amidon, Grace Potter, Lissa Schneckenberger, Anaïs Mitchell, and Joanne Garton among them. We’ve reviewed these performers’ albums in the past. Others on the site were unknown to us. We had our first encounter with Zoe Keating, Twiddle, Chris Weisman and Happy Jawbone on Bandcamp.

Bandcamp’s setup allows potential buyers of a performer’s music to listen to the album’s tracks from start to finish instead of just 20- or 30-second snippets as you’ll find at other online music stores. Generally, you can listen to a whole album at least once before deciding to purchase it. You have the option to download an album in MP3 or FLAC formats, or purchase a CD, and each purchase allows for unlimited streaming of the album.

Album prices range from pay what you can to $10 or $15 for streaming rights and/or CD format.

Many musicians formerly sold their music on CD Baby, another sales outlet, but that online retail site closed March 31. Online sales venues also include Apple and Spotify.

We chose a number of musicians to highlight but many more are available to peruse at Bandcamp.

We listened to the debut album by Robscure “Vibe Long Night | New Day.” This hip-hop artist from Burlington released this album on Oct. 9. He has three other albums for sale on the site.

“Unzip the Horizon” 14 tracks of music by Moira Smiley from Bristol, is in the acoustic folk style. Smiley has toured with several folk bands. This album reflects what she has learned from older traditional singers.

We encountered the band Strawberry 3000 from Springfield with 43 separate releases, far too many to review. The music is varied in style.

Barishi is a heavy metal band from Brattleboro and the album is “Old Smoke.” The members are Graham Brooks, Jonathan Kelley and Dylan Blake. While heavy metal is not usually our cup of tea, these guys are the real thing. This album as described at their site is “a sprawling cacophony of earth-shattering grooves and ferocious elegance, redefining contemporary progressive metal.” It was released April 24.

We checked out the album “Pangs of Conscience” by Harpoons, a Winooski-based punk basement-garage band. The members are Liam Elder-Connors, Nick Kennedy and Nate Lewis. Elder-Conners’ name may ring a bell as he is one of the newsreaders on Vermont Public Radio.

The one spoken word album we encountered was “Eugene V. Debs: Trade Unionist, Socialist, Revolutionary, 1855-1926,” by our own Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders wrote and directed this spoken word release about Debs’ legacy in 1979, as part of his work for the American People’s Historical Society. A complete transcript of the recording is included in liner notes.

Twiddle, a rock quartet, writes on its page, “spins tall tales over an intricate soundscape of hi-def shred. “Their fresh multi-genre approach conjures up jazz, classical, and bluegrass, but above all, masterfully blends reggae and funk,” say the notes. “Obliterating laws of improvisation, their complex arrangements never fail to leave crowds lusting for more.” Twiddle has five albums on the site.

“Music For Dance,” 20 tracks by John Hughes, is interesting. Hughes is an internationally renowned composer, kora (African harp) player, percussionist and vocalist whose style crosses myriad cultural boundaries and fuses disparate influences. He has six albums of original music at the site.

“Closer Tuning” by Chris Weisman from Brattleboro is one of 21 projects from this prolific performer. He’s perhaps best known for his time with the Brattleboro garage-pop band Happy Birthday. He has at least 14 solo albums to his credit since 2009 — including the 88-song opus Maya Properties. His site says: “Weisman is a devout Beatles acolyte; melodically, the influences of Lennon/McCartney overtly inform his pop sensibility. He is also a deeply knowledgeable student of jazz.”

It’s easy to get lost in all the streaming offerings from Vermonters at this site. You could spend several long winter days listening and discover the wide variety of music being recorded by musicians from the Green Mountain state.

[email protected]

Avatar photo

As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.