A Writer — Er, Ten Writers — Walk Into a Bar…
Yours truly spent some quality time last night with his peers in the H-town music-writing community last night, thanks to Caroline Collective-izer and all-round cool guy Matthew Wettergreen, who cajoled and coerced nearly a dozen writer-type people into showing up at Cecil’s and hanging out for a few hours. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Because I tend to generally be kind of a shy person by nature and am these days a kid-having, near-burb-living homebody, the sad reality is that I often meet my fellow writers, even in the relatively small, brackish pond that is the Houston scene, only in online form. So it was extremely cool to be able to catch up with the handful of folks I have already met and finally put a face to an email address/byline for a lot of the others.
I’d like to say we discussed deep, secret Music Writer Things, but the reality’s a lot more goofy — I ended up talking SXSW and beer with David Cobb & Craig Hlavaty, the perils of flight with Sara Cress, and then (somewhat more seriously) how annoyed I get with great, great bands that write amazing songs and then vanish in a puff of smoke before anybody outside their little micro-scene gets to notice ’em.
There were a few folks who couldn’t make it (sorry to hear you had to work, Adam…), but all things considered, the turnout was pretty great. Here’s the list of folks I remember seeing there last night, in quasi-alphabetical order (and if I leave anybody out, I’m really, really sorry):
- Me (duh)
- Marc Brubaker (Houstonist)
- David Cobb (Houston Calling)
- Sara Cress (29-95.com)
- Andrew Dansby (Houston Chronicle; 29-95.com)
- Anna Garza (Free Press Houston; ex-Hands Up Houston member)
- Craig Hlavaty (Houston Press)
- Joe Mathlete (29-95.com)
- David Sadof (Houston Music Examiner; ex-Lunar Rotation host)
- Brittanie Shey (Houston Press)
- Matthew Wettergreen (Caroline Collective)
- John Gray (an accidental walkup — he was apparently meeting w/Craig to go see Mariah Carey and found himself trapped in the middle of a bunch of fellow writerly people; Houston Press)
- Bucky (another surprise walkup; ex-Hands Up Houston member)
Like I said, there were some who couldn’t make it — I’d have loved to meet the Breakfast On Tour gang, the IndieHouston.org guys (again), or the AudioADD or weworemasks folks, any of ’em — but it was quite a crew, even still. I joked morbidly at one point that one well-placed bomb could take out the bulk of H-town music coverage… (Hrm. Maybe we should keep the time/location of these things secret so as to avoid the wrath of disgruntled band members/musicians?)
Anyway, thanks to Matthew for setting it all up, and high-five to all the folks I got to chat & bond with; I’ve got my fingers crossed that there’ll be many, many more of these things.
John was actually there to hang out before he came to drum for Prairie Cadets. Always good to see you, sir. Someday we'll get to play a show you can come to, I'm certain.
we would come if ya'll hit us up!
-grizzly/weworemasks
Damn…I was afraid of that — I didn't know who all Matthew had invited, so… I promise, I'll pester him to get y'all on this list next time! :^)
On that same note, Bucky was there to meet me since we had dinner plans immediately thereafter.
It was great to meet everyone. You guys and gals seemed to have an interesting conversation going on at the other end of the table.
xoxo,
Anna Garza
Great writeup of a smash event. The goal really was just to sit down with awesome people and talk about what we love: music. We really should do something like this regularly as a way to get all of us out of our respective caves more often.
Hey, Anna! Sorry, I really meant to come down there & say "hi" — y'all seemed to be the more serious end of the discussion, and I didn't want to interrupt. At the other end, we were mostly talking about beer and SXSW… ;^)
And Matthew — yep, I agree completely. I've already got a list of people I'd suggest to include, too, if you're game…