I received an email about an hour ago asking me what I thought about the direction of music in Door County and what are my motives in writing about it here. An interesting email, I wish the sender had posted it as a blog.
Door County is a great place to visit for people turned on by art and music. For me personally, music has been a big part of my life for as far back as I can remember. As well as enjoying music in the same way that most people do, I've long been passionate about the art and science of music reproduction. I've developed what I think is a critical ear when it comes to music and I've been fortunate enough to have found myself in a community where music and art is really at the core of everything. However, I've never had an urge to be involved in a music venue, that came to be as something of an accident. Though I'm passionate about music, one needs a different kind of motivation to turn it into something commercial. Maybe that is at the center of what is going on in Door County right now, and maybe it's the tussle between the creative and artistic element and the desire by some people to capitalize on it for self gain, that's causing an itch in me that I cannot seem to scratch.
There's a wind if change blowing through the Door County music scene and as with most change it's slow and unpredictable in taking on a shape. It's still very much in a form which can be influenced and I'd like to do my part in giving it a shove here and a prod there, to try to help steer it in a general direction that's in the interests of those who make music and those who listen to it.
If you focus your attention too much on either the makers or the consumers, you start to slant the whole thing in a unhealthy direction and I think there's a little bit of that going on in Door County right now. There are a few venue's that are taking a somewhat aggressive stance in their claim on the Door County music scene. Not just venues but the occasional would-be Harvey Goldsmith have stepped up and tried to make a claim on something that cannot and should not be owned for material gain.
Keep music alive and fresh and growing. You can't do that when you try to over-commercialize it and ignore the very reason why it exists in the first instance. A little cryptic?, yes, I guess so.
It relates in some ways, but not entirely, to the impact of larger non-profit music venues emerging in an area renowned for its eclectic music scene and wide array of locally grown talent. The local talent has been nurtured through smaller, independently owned music venues, some of which are being jeopardized by the emergence of the musical Goliath(s). If the smaller venues start to disappear, as it seems some are, how will the new local talent be nurtured and where will they find an outlet and a stage to develop their creativity?
Support your local venues by doing as much as you can to ensure their continued existence.
Joe Joe's Pizza
Ladder House
Mojo Rosa's
Husby's
Gordon Lodge
FishStock (Camp David)
Hitching Post
....are a few of the one's still alive, I think.
Cheers
