A Note Regarding “The BIG RED” Recognitions

I was sitting at Toad over the weekend enjoying some truly fine music from some great musicians and was thinking to myself, I really wish I could just let everyone in the world know about ALL of the wonderful musicians from this city. I wish I could make it my life’s work to cast a light upon those musicians who are out rocking every night for 17 bucks and a beer, the songwriter who you won’t hear on the radio but writes incomparably better than 90% of the garbage you will likely hear on terrestrial radio, and those people who live for collaborating and creating a space for people to just “feel” the music. I wish that I could just build a perfect music community, give everyone incredible full house gigs where every member is listening to their songs, or claps at every solo. I wish I could tell you all about every single wonderful musician in this town and recognize them deservingly, but sadly I cannot. I am one person and it would be extremely tough even if I quit my day job to do so. So, I will just do the best I can for now.

The past couple weeks of having nominees float in has been interesting to say the least. There are a lot of people on the ballots who I was fully expecting a flood of nominations to roll in for (and they did), some that I was surprised to hear brought up, and some I was sad to not have at least 2 nominations for to include in one of the categories. Regardless, I am very happy with the outpouring of support that you all have for one another. It is truly humbling and a beautiful thing to witness.

I do want to say that I played this as fairly as I possibly could. I stuck to the “must have at least 2 noms” rule very strictly. I took the community’s input rather than my own, or a committee of “music industry buffs”, or anything along those lines. I hate to be the jaded local picker or bad mouther, but I despise seeing the same people nominated for ill-adapted, out of place categories every year. Or see “the award director favorites” always seemingly end up on a ballot regardless of whether or not they may have released an album or even played in town in the last 8 months. 

If you weren’t included and think you should be, I am sorry. If you think someone else should have been included that you nominated, I am sorry as well, but as previously mentioned I stuck to that “2 fer” rule pretty tight. And if you nominated yourself, then I am sorry because you clearly do not get the point of this blog and its ideals.

I started this whole blog thing 9 months ago because I felt that there was an unmet need to draw attention to great local roots/folk music in the NorthEast. These are YOUR awards. No, f*ck that, they aren’t awards, they are recognitions of your peers for being amazing and talented in what they do. I hope that it at least shines a little more light on those independent artists who I am tremendously grateful to share a community with every single day.