“I don’t know that any one of us could be doing this ourselves,” Sarah Reid said. As a music scene mainstay, kitchen worker, and part-time venue booker, Reid knows as well as anyone about the behind-the-scenes hustle that goes into assuring that musicians have a stage and a community in Norman, and it’s only been […]
Brett Fieldcamp
Posted inMusic
Label makers
For a couple generations of musicians raised on brutal public disputes, scene veteran horror stories, and way too many episodes of Behind the Music, it’s often felt like record labels were the enemy. In an age loaded with hyper-indie sentiment and a prevailing DIY mentality bolstered by social media and YouTube, the question, “Why do […]
Posted inMusic
Machine learning
Nathan Wright worries about technology. The social media plague corrupting our brains. The cold, impersonal algorithms dictating our daily lives. Even the recent pushes into AI-generated art. But as a musical artist in the modernized world, you either figure out how to embrace it or you get crushed beneath the wheels. “There’s a sort of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Press your luck
We’ve all heard it a thousand times by now: bookstores are dying, indie publishing is dead, and print media is a dusty relic of the distant past, all run out of the market by chain stores and online convenience. And yet, OKC’s Literati Press is now twelve years into the game and going stronger than […]
Posted inMusic
Strange days
“There are times when I’m just like ‘Oklahoma, I love you,’” Bartees Strange said from Washington D.C. He’s been reminiscing about cheap Norman apartment complexes, sadly departed OKC indie venues and the surprising wealth of musical styles and identities in the local scenes, but it was a mention of Oklahoma’s pink evening skies that got […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Blood pact
Choate House’s portfolio is a stunning collection of wedding and family photography, but Blood Relative Films’ Tenkiller is a gritty and profanity-laden crime flick. Both entities were born from the minds of husband-and-wife duo Jeremy Choate and Kara Choate. The couple met in art school at Oklahoma University and Choate House was a way for […]
Posted inMusic
Tuning in Tokyo
Blueprint Tokyo might be something of a little-known name here in their home state, but they’re blowing up around the world. 100,000-plus streams on Spotify. Top 30 on the UK iTunes charts. Collaborating with top international producers like Mark Needham and Travis Ference. But if you look at their social media numbers, you’d really never […]
Posted inMusic
Rocketmen
SLANDER have been on the dance scene for nearly a decade, consistently blowing up, garnering massive video views and streaming play numbers and collaborating with an exploding cast of singers and songwriters. They’re also just getting around to dropping their debut album. Even with a hugely successful back catalog of singles and feature appearances, the […]
Posted inMusic
Halloween to the extreme
Without question, one of the modern Oklahoma music scene’s greatest institutions is My So-Called Band, the “mostly” 90s cover act that packs rooms and picks at nostalgia all over the state, prompting the kind of full-throated, drunken singalongs most major acts can only dream of. As raucous and radical as an average MSCB show can […]
Posted inMusic
House of ideas
2020 saw a loss of jobs, of homes, of community, and for many even the loss of access to their own art and creativity. Amy Young, owner and founder of art school and community center SixTwelve in the Paseo, nearly lost all of those things and more. “I had to choose between selling my house […]