Spirits Rebellious

What is a newcomer doing covering Reno’s emerging music scene as if this isn’t already being done? To be honest, I’m not too sure myself but I seem to have the urge to work on projects like this wherever I go. I guess for me, it’s about connecting with community and the people that create the art and music that I enjoy. The more I have gone deep into learning about Reno’s bands and the history of the venues they play at, I’ve come to learn that there is a lot going on in this Big Little City. I feel like each day I’m discovering a new band or artist to cover on Spirits Rebellious.

Spirits Rebellious isn’t my first venture in capturing the music scene of the city I live in. See The Leaves was a blog I started around 2010 and what came of that over the next few years surprised me. It all started by posting very bad YouTube videos of bands I was seeing in San Francisco and Sacramento, shot on an old point and shoot Canon camera. I don’t remember the pixel size at this point, I do remember there was a blown-out pixel in the top center. I used that camera all the way up until I got to know a more professional photographer and videographer named Sean Stout from Sacramento who recommended a Canon T2i paired with a 50mm lens. Around this same time (and well before I could buy the T2i), a rep from Force Field PR reached out to see if I was interested in filming bands on their roster. Apparently, he had come across my Ganglians videos and loved them. I absolutely wanted to do this; however, I was still in school, I only had my point and shoot, and I had no “studio space”.

I was living in Stockton, CA at the time and I’m not sure the rep understood that I had nothing to offer these bands regarding photos and video shoots. It all came to a head when plans were being made to shoot Lower Dens as they toured through San Francisco in support of their album Twin-Hand Movement. Eventually, emails stopped being responded to and the shoot never happened. Embarrassing for sure, and I thought that whatever I wanted to do with See The Leaves wouldn’t happen. I had an in with Force Field, who had an incredible roster of emerging and established indie bands, and I felt this calamity severed that connection. I continued posting tracks and videos between Blogspot and YouTube, albeit with a little less enthusiasm than before but I kept posting. The timeline escapes me at this point, but several events lined up that got things back on track.

I opened a Twitter account (RIP) and started to network with other bloggers. I also began searching for indie labels and other publishing media outlets. From this search, I found Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear and Weekly Tape Deck. These three sites had distinct styles and music curation which I connected to right away. These sites led me to music from Woodsman, Woods and a compilation called In A Cloud, a San Francisco collection of bands from the city. I point out these three specifically because they highlight aspects that influenced me at the time and changed how I thought about music and my personal tastes and interests.

After seeing a Woodsman show in San Francisco, I noticed what could be done by bands when they have control over all aspects of their music with a relatively low budget. They were selling their own records, artwork, cassettes, CDs and anything they possibly could as band merch (lighters with band stickers on them, ok, I’m game). The cassettes and CDs usually had art done over the physical tape or disc (colored spray paint or drawings, things like that) in addition to the cover art. During those early years of See The Leaves, I acquired a large tape collection from bands I saw. My car at the time still had a tape deck so I figured why not. I had stopped buying CD’s and was listening to music at home on vinyl, so cassettes were perfect for me while driving.

Soon after this show, a friend of mine turned me on to Woods with their album Songs of Shame. I was hooked. The songs were lo-fi and recorded in bedrooms or makeshift home studios. I stopped caring about high-fidelity recordings at this time. The tracks I was listening to sounded incredible and were recorded however they could be. I learned about At Rear House, which was the home studio Jeremy Earl and Travis Taveniere used to record not only their Woods records but a ton of bands from the Brooklyn and surrounding areas. Going through the Woodsist discography, so many artists recorded an album or 7-inch single At Rear House. Woods, via their label Woodsist records, had created a movement in regard to lo-fi sounding music and I ate it all up. Sic Alps, Vivian Girls, Sun Araw, Real Estate, MV & EE, Blues Control, Kurt Vile, the list goes on. I had endless amounts of content to go through and music to discover.

I noticed a lot of blogs and websites I was following were out of Brooklyn and the East Coast. I followed along and loved everything that was going on over there. However, I wanted something closer to home. I diverted my searches and started looking for blogs and bands along the West Coast. Through this search I came across the In A Cloud compilation. This record was released by Secret Seven (RIP) in 2010 and featured tracks from Sonny and the Sunsets, The Fresh & Only’s, The Sandwitches, Thee Oh See’s, Kelley Stoltz, Tim Cohen and Ty Segall to name a few.

This compilation introduced me to the local San Francisco music scene, which was on fire at that time. Once school was finishing up, an opportunity came my way to live there, and I took this chance without thinking twice about it. After completing the move, I documented the shows and music I was seeing. Finally, See The Leaves had a focus. San Francisco/Bay Area bands got priority on the site, and I would get to every show I possibly could during that first year for pictures and reviews. The floodgates opened after this move. I learned about bands like Girls, Wooden Shjips, Sic Alps, Lumerians, Soft Moon, Young Prisms, Weekend, The Mantles, White Fence, Nodzzz, Shannon and the Clams (Oakland) and so much more.

After making some post-school income, I saved for that Canon T2i and taught myself how to take and edit photos using the basic software I had on the nearly dead school laptop I still held on to. Concert photography became my new favorite hobby. These photos were getting me press passes to shows and events like Noisepop (and SXSW in 2014 which I thought was cool). I would sometimes see my photography published on larger blogs or websites which I thought was encouraging. I teamed up with fellow SF bloggers to promote and put on shows around the City, which was another cool experience, but I think the capstone to this music blog era was the pressing of a vinyl record.

Another blogger and I utilized Kickstarter to raise funds for a San Francisco music compilation, myself taking personal inspiration from the In A Cloud record. Our record was pressed on orange vinyl, and we utilized a local artist to screen print the front and backs of the LP jackets. Those who backed the higher tiers of the Kickstarter got custom artwork on their copies from some of the musicians featured on the album. We sold out of the run within a few months, and the records went all over the country with some shipping off to Canada and the UK. Seeing the compilation we worked on sold at Amoeba Records and other local record shops was something special. I didn’t expect to be doing any of this at the start of See The Leaves and it was some of the best times of my life.

So, where does Reno come into all this? Well, quite frankly the music scene here is incredible. The energy and sheer number of shows that take place here matches, if not surpasses, what I experienced in San Francisco. The Holland Project is my Bottom of the Hill. But one thing I’ve noticed and has stood out to me is how supportive the music community is. It doesn’t matter what genre or style of music they’re making. Everyone supports each other. Everyone is proud to be creating, showing up to shows and pushing the Reno music narrative. Through Spirits Rebellious, I want to try and capture this energy. I want to post as much music as I can from local artists and get tracks out there for anyone in the world to listen to. I hope to get to as many shows as possible and capture on camera this moment because I have a feeling something special is going to happen here. I would also like to press another record; From Reno, with Love, but we’ll focus on building this site…for now.