photo by biotron
This past year at DMP has been a topsy turvy adventure compared to the consistent monthly events we put on over our first year and a half in existance, so I can only imagine how our collaborators and community have perceived our moves.
If you’ve felt let down on any level or if I’ve been unresponsive, I sincerely apologize. Things just got tough.
We went from energetically promoting shows with intricate, full color posters placed around town weeks in advance and teaming up with locals DJs to interview our bands to just getting the damn show on and hoping our turnout was live enough to represent on the recordings.
Even our interactions with the musicians involved petered out to a weak fish handshake, non-existant upfront collaboration and minimal follow-up. For the first year of the project, we would try to collaborate with the musicians and post-show, the album and video would be ready for release before the next monthly show. Over the past year, a nine month backlog has been the norm, which in turn, understandably, saps our musician’s passion for promoting their involvement in the project.
Essentially, the passion from everyone involved has been slipping and I, undoubtedly, was the leader of the passionless pack.
What to do?
Back in December of last year, after feeling the burnout coming on, I met with members of our core team to discuss potential moves in 2010 — hoping to find a spark to our project, something to rally around. If nothing came of the meeting, I told myself I was ready to shut DMP down and move on to more personal, expressive pursuits, such as setting up a studio at Lyndon and painting in my off hours.
I think I was actually hoping for such an out.
The outcome of the meeting? I didn’t get a sense that people wanted to stop doing what we were doing, rather, the feedback was positive with the catch that our media team should start getting paid for their time. And I was in total agreement.
I was already having a difficult time asking neighbors who are knee deep in a local, economic climate of a 12% unemployment rate to donate their time to the project. Aside from that self-applied guilt, which was substantial, I had been scheming night and day for years trying to figure out the levers involved for creating a sustainable project as part of our long-term vision.
The problem I keep running into is the commoditization of media over the past 10 years — commoditization to the point that music videos and live albums had little to no “value” in the marketplace. Also, how the hell do we squeeze blood from stones, where people either don’t have the money to support these local artists or simply don’t care enough to do so.
So I left that meeting with what you might call… a challenge.
Making moves… any moves
Not quite sure how to reframe our project without losing the vibe we created, we attempted to make our Jan. show in Durham a gig with a cover charge, hoping to garner enough cash to pay the media crew. But since we were glomming onto an existing show last minute, that conversation came far too late to the table. In March, we held a non-paid gig for The Brand New Life and Israel Darling at the Bean as part of what we considered a four show per year free approach.
Not quite a plan for sustainability, either.
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In April we attached ourselves to a Symbiotic event and our photogs and shooters were paid by the event organizer himself, but aside from the pictures and one album, paid for by the musicians, the rest of the media sits on the shelf. And I lost decent money on the deal.
In May we recorded the Often Awesome Benefit Show for a compilation album with all proceeds going to Tim LaFollette. We then recorded a live show for Crystal Bright and The Silver Hands, forgoing any pay to help them kick off a tour. Later that month, we held a hip hop show with Psyoptic Records, charged $5 at the door and landed two local sponsors for less than $100 per. Again, I walked away with a hole in my pocket. |
Admittedly, I was ready to start painting.
As a last ditch effort to keep the project moving forward, in any direction, I contacted a local acquaintance who’s much better than I with these things, to see if he could help me make any sense out of DMP from a business sustainability perspective. After a long conversation over a few whisky & waters and Guinness’ at Fishers, I walked away with a plan of sorts:
- Document a 1 to 5 year vision for the project, in all its forms, along with a budget
- Create a structure for the organization that will enable us to receive grants, donations and sponsorships
- Plan a fundraising event to establish us with a baseline operating budget
- Begin the work of writing grants and chasing down sponsorship leads
None of this stuff makes me feel creative, let alone comfortable. I mean, a fundraiser? We don’t have cancer or ALS or any number of life or death afflictions that friends of mine are dealing with right now. How can I expect people to come out and open up their wallets to support our project?
And then my acquaintance, who’s quickly becoming a friend, said something alone the lines of, “If people love this project and want this project as a part of the community, they’ll financially support this project.” To such wisdom, I reluctantly acquiesced.
Moving forward
So I now find myself drawing up a business plan of sorts, one that focuses on re-establishing our events over the next year and building out from there. Without any shows scheduled for the rest of this year, I’m thinking about putting together a huge festival-like fundraiser in the fall, hopefully stacked with musicians who’ve played DMP previously and are willing to give back.
Photo by Tanya Peterson
Anyone interested in helping me plan the event, man the keg stand, sell merchandise, run sound, market the hell out of it, please get in touch with me. If everything falls into place, we could be in a position to start having monthly or bi-monthly shows once again, with a steady night and home, beginning in the spring, with everyone walking away happy.
Then it’ll get interesting.
