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.

Labels: Admin Stuff, H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Random Rambling

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