DMP is a collective of musicians, photographers, videographers & sound engineers who put on and document live shows to expose the talents of everyone involved to an audience beyond the confines of a small venue within a small town.
Photo by Mark Smith
From April 2008 until October 2009, we booked 40 original bands & musicians local to Greensboro and/or surrounding counties in North Carolina to perform under our hot lights. Our media team, numbering over 50 independent professionals, have produced and released 40 live albums & music videos over that time period, as well as more than 3,000 photographs.
People gathered, imbibed, got to know one another, listened, danced and reveled in the moment.
Moving Forward
Community building; promoting the Greensboro music scene; helping bands become DIY in distributing their craft; connecting with the local creative community — we’re extremely happy with the results of our first few years. Quite frankly, it was a blast. Unfortunately, a monthly production with an all volunteer staff isn’t sustainable, so we’re making a few changes to our approach in order to continue to do what we love.
#1 First Friday Shows At The Green Bean
We’ve kicked off a partnership with The Green Bean to document their First Friday art exhibit openings, collaborating with Kemp Stroble — the Bean’s booker extraordinaire — to find up and coming acts local to Greensboro who need the assistance we provide; namely, a free live album, music video and professional photographs. We’ll document four of these shows per year, providing the media gratis to the musicians and the commons as we have for the past two years. It’s our way of scaling back from the workload of post-production while continuing to provide a free service to the community.
#2 Getting Artists Paid
Musicians receive a good amount of empathy when it comes to not getting paid for their craft, but there are plenty of talented sound engineers, photographers and filmmakers struggling to make a living as well. So as we support musicians in one manner, DMP has decided to focus on developing an avenue for paying these other artists. Our ever growing collective of media makers will have the ability to provide a rate sheet for their work and DMP will actively pitch the documentation of gigs to venues, labels and bands, from near and far, using our existing released media as a portfolio.
We’re hoping that this shift not only provides more incentive for creative folk to participate in our free project — as participating automatically makes them eligible to get on a paid gig — but that it’ll raise the quality bar even higher as their dotmatrix project work becomes their portfolio piece by default for potential clients to choose from.
CONTACT INFO
If you’re interested in participating in a DMP show, please contact one of the following people:
Executive Producer: Sean Coon
Manages promotions, creative direction, sponsorship inquiry and show logistics. Contact directly with inquiries for having DMP work your venue or show.
Music Director: Don Ravon
Interfaces with musicians, recording engineer, mixes albums and coordinates media team output.
Photography Lead: Elizabeth Lemon
Coordinates interested photographers, manages photo community, critiques, uploads and exhibits.
Film Lead: Michael McQueen
Coordinates interested videographers, manages music video releases.
Sound Lead: Dan Bayer
Coordinates interested sound engineers, mixes albums, lead recording engineer.