The adventures and various works of a photographer, road tripper, former patron of the local arts, aspiring app developer, and late night coffee drinker and conversationalist.
A little over fifteen years ago, I produced and released a compilation of recordings from Alex Pogosov's and my open mic at Bill's Records. This CD, ultimately numbering around 200-250 copies, was conceived as a means of promoting the weekly gathering at Bill's and featured performances by a number of our regulars up to that point in time. More than a decade and a half later, I've had that promotional album cut to vinyl, fulfilling a long harbored fantasy dating all the way back to childhood. I'm just barely old enough to (dimly) remember actual records being played on the radio, and when I was three and four years old I wanted to make one of my own. Today's manufacturing on demand services have now made that possible.
The Lost Art showrunners in 2010. Photo by Lilly Penhall.
I kicked off 2009 with a truly incendiary show at the Vampire Lounge. Two nights later, I was back for a night featuring Severed Sol. I honestly don't remember why I went to that show, as the name Severed Sol conjures up absolutely nothing in my memory, and my only notable photos from that night were a few throwaway shots of model/photographer Amber DeVille posing with a lit candle. I continued to hit up the Skillman Street Pub fairly regularly, and I began to slowly broaden my circle of venues a bit. I had a new sometimes-companion to some of the shows now, the two of us spending quite a bit of time together. That person was the Cassie B. from my 2008 birthday party and the December 20th show at Lola's. Despite certain acquaintances' insinuations to the contrary, Cassie and I were never more than just best friends – I wasn't her type, and as for me, my affections definitely lay elsewhere, with a lovely lady in the scene who shall remain unnamed. Cassie accompanied me to performances by bands such as Red Pyramid, Sidekick Mafia, and the Opus Flux, and in March we made a weekend trip down to Austin during the SXSW festival. During the Austin trip we stopped in at Headhunters and saw a performance of the Blue Flames, a band which, I was pleased to learn, hailed originally from Dallas.
With the recent heavily researched, long gestating content I've put up recently (and with more still on the way), it's time to take a step back from high effort material. I've been thinking for some time that I should get around to recounting my days in the local music scene, specifically my nine-ish years spent as a photographer of local bands. There are references to those days all over this website, and curated examples of my work from that time period are easily accessible via my Live Photography galleries. But I've never taken the time to tell the tale in full and to discuss how I got into the scene, who my principal collaborators were while I was in it, and why I eventually ended up leaving it. I've decided that now is the time for that story to be told.
One of my favorite pursuits, albeit one I don't speak about very often, is to search for "found footage" of local events and happenings from days past. These can be on VHS, Hi8, miniDV, 8mm, or 16mm film - in short, on any format I can view and possibly archive. It's rare that I actually find anything, but once in a great while I do stumble upon something interesting. I've decided to start uploading some of these to the YouTube channel as I come across them, and today I'm pleased to announce the first two of said uploads.
Continue reading "DFW music scene found footage"
As of today, the Live Photography photo gallery is finally back up and running, with a total of fifteen bands and performers represented via dedicated galleries and a further forty-five via "Miscellaneous Bands." A gallery of music venue photos is also up now. This remains a work in progress, and several other band galleries are still in the pipeline with a planned rollout at some point in the future. The need to go through thousands of photos from hundreds of different shows is the primary reason this has taken so long.
Continue reading "The live photography gallery is back online, plus a few statistics"
