By Scott A. Johnson
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sunday, September 05, 2004
The first issue of Localist magazine was printed at a Kinko’s on a budget of about $900.
Taking as its subject “independent music, art, literature and thought,” the publication was a stereotypical “indie” affair, dominated by an arty, do-it-yourself attitude. One thing, however, distinguished the bimonthly periodical from similar productions: Its focus was on alternative arts in Arkansas, a state not always known for such things.
Now more than a year old, the Little Rock-based bimonthly celebrated its anniversary with its July/August issue. Packaged with a sampler CD featuring music by local bands, it was a surprisingly polished affair filling more than 80 pages.
Still, the edgy attitude that dominates much indie culture prevailed. (While not accepted by all, the term “indie” has become a widely accepted label applied to the full spectrum of alternative art produced outside of the mainstream media.)
T.J. Deeter is Localist’s publisher. Prior to starting the periodical, the 31-year-old had become known as the organizer of a showcase for local bands held on Tuesday evenings at Little Rock’s White Water Tavern. He also is a musician, performing with the band W/O (pronounced “without”).
“It’s all about solidarity,” he says of Localist. “It’s about getting everybody thinking they are part of this bigger thing and working at getting away from cliquish sorts of stuff.”
While the publication has managed to survive its first year, producing Localistcontinues to be a struggle. The number of copies printed has varied radically depending on funds available, ranging up to about 1,000 for some issues and substantially less for others.
The last Localist sold for $4 a copy, but beginning with the next is sue, which should be available by Sept. 13, the magazine will be distributed free. Deeter and other organizers also are investigating the possibility of becoming a nonprofit organization, a move that may help attract financial supporters.
Despite its fledgling status, Localist has become a standardbearer in Arkansas indie circles. Many see it as perhaps the most obvious sign that something is afoot with the state’s alternative arts.
Burt Taggart, founder of Max Recordings, a Little Rock label specializing in music of Arkansas bands, is one of those who believes times are good for the state’s indie scene.
Begun in Fayetteville about three years ago, Max Recordings initially focused on 45-rpm singles on vinyl but recently has devoted more attention to CDs and full-length albums. The label will release its 11th recording on Sept. 17 — the final album by Little Rock band Mulehead.
This month the label also will make its first waves outside of Arkansas when a disc by the Little Rock band American Princes becomes the label’s first to be distributed nationally.
“I think the components that get put together so that you can plug into a music community are here in Little Rock for the first time for a great long while,” says Taggart, who is also a member of two Arkansas indie bands, The Big Cats and Pants, “and I think that’s a really, really great thing.”
RADIO FREE ARKANSAS
Today, KABF-FM, 88.3, in Little Rock will break new ground with Radio Free Arkansas.
Since April 2000, Northwest Arkansas has been home to KXUA-FM, 88.3, a college radio station at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville that has made indie rock a mainstay. Central Arkansas, however, has lacked a counterpart, something Radio Free Arkansas hopes to address.
According to John Cain, KABF general station manager, the nonprofit, communitybased KABF will continue to target a broad market with diverse programming. Organized in conjunction with Localist, Radio Free Arkansas will expand the station’s rock programming to seven days a week with shows beginning most days at 10 p.m. or midnight.
One program, Tuesday’s “Locals Only,” will devote air time to central Arkansas musicians. The hope, according to Michael Martinez, the major force behind Radio Free Arkansas, is “to strengthen our own scene by giving local musicians a platform to display their work and an opportunity to promote recordings and live events.”
Solidifying the state’s indie scene, however, is no easy task. Like any youth culture, it is an internally fragile world. Bands form and break up with lightning speed. Twentysomethings come and go with a freedom their more mature counterparts don’t share.
In Arkansas, those facts are compounded by an indie scene that is inevitably smaller and more vulnerable than those elsewhere. Chris Selby knows that firsthand.
For 4 1/2 years, Selby ran Clunk Music Hall, a venue that brought an impressive array of national bands to Fayetteville.
Located off College Avenue, the music hall was initially a success, drawing steady crowds early on for shows by Arkansas bands and eventually attracting national acts. An all-ages venue, it served no alcohol and for a time also housed Selby’s record store, Clunk Records.
Eventually, however, many of the local bands on which Selby had relied to draw crowds disbanded. And things got difficult.
“There were some new bands that did OK but nothing really stuck,” Selby says. “Then it was to the point where I was having to make rent exclusively off booking out-of-town shows, and it’s really hard to make much money off a touring show especially if you have to guarantee very much.”
Selby closed the music hall in July 2002, devoting his energies to Clunk Records, which he now operates out of a storefront not far from the Fayetteville Square. He also regularly books indie acts in conjunction with two local venues, JR’s Lightbulb Club and the Dickson Theater.
“If I could have made enough money to break even I would still be doing it now,” he says of the music hall, “but there was just no way to continue my eating habit.”
INDIE ENTREPRENEURS
Despite challenges, however, others continue to give indie entrepreneurship a go.
Rod Bryan is a founding member of one of Arkansas’ seminal indie bands, Ho-Hum, which had a brief but bitter taste of the mainstream recording for Universal, a major label. He has run Anthro-Pop, a Little Rock record store specializing in indie rock, since September 2001. Originally opened downtown on Seventh Street, the business moved in March to a storefront on Markham Street and now claims its first employee.
Bryan also spearheads Playadel, a label created primarily to release the music of Ho-Hum, and runs a Web design business to keep the store and the label afloat. Like others in his situation, he stresses that something other than profit margin propels him to keep Anthro-Pop going.
“It’s about do you want to live in a million dollar penthouse by yourself or do you want to live in a tent around activities and people that you really enjoy,” Bryan says. “You’re really seeing that in the core of our fine city in the fringes of Hillcrest and the Stifft Station-Capitol View area, where I’m located. There are tons of artists and it’s not a generational thing. It’s an ideology thing.”
That’s a familiar strain for others involved in the indie world. Shoni and Sean Estes opened Blank Generation on Main Street in downtown Little Rock in August 2003. Prior to that, the couple had operated the business for two years in Conway.
Located in the storefront that had previously been home to Phillips Men’s Store, the business is perhaps best known as an alternative music venue. At its busiest, it can have up to four shows a week and typically is booked at least every Friday and Saturday. The store also sells a variety of alternative goods including comic books, records, CDs, T-shirts and magazines.
Shoni Estes admits the business is not a particularly lucrative venture so far. To help support their family, she and her husband hold down other jobs. But in the end, the decision to open Blank Generation had less to do with making money than what Estes calls “building community.”
“We thought, ‘Where do we want to go? We can go anywhere we want to,’” she explains. “We just felt like Little Rock was where it was needed. Not that there weren’t other things going on here, but we just felt to stay here at home and try to make an impact here would make the best difference. They don’t need us in Chicago.”
MAKING CONNECTIONS
As they are elsewhere, Arkansas’ indie kids are a cultural minority often split into still smaller groups. Punks, hip-hop fans, skateboarders, goths — all among the various groups claiming unique identities.
Inclusiveness, however, is a goal for many. The organizers of Localist, for instance, have made a conscious effort to make sure their publication incorporates as wide a variety of alternative art as possible.
Past issues have included poetry, fashion spreads and essays as well as music reviews and political statements. Early on, the editors decided the publication would include color pages to make suitable reproduction of art possible.
It is not the only group attempting to bring to the foreground some of the non-music elements of indie culture. Little Rock’s Pink Tulle Gallery, for instance, has held well-attended art shows at the city’s renovated Kramer School, which have attracted indie crowds.
Something similar happened in Fayetteville in July when the Dickson Theater hosted Art Amiss, an event that drew more than 300 people to view a wide array of contemporary art, film and fashion. Organizers hope to make it a seasonal event and have scheduled the next Art Amiss for January.
Summer Guthery, a fashion designer, spearheaded the effort and got help from Deeter and Localist. That cooperation illustrates another important connection being made in Arkansas’ alternative scene.
While indie kids exist across the state, for the most part Little Rock and Fayetteville remain the major centers of alternative culture. A substantial bond now links the indie scene in both places even though each city is located closer to larger metropolitan areas (Tulsa in Fayetteville’s case, Memphis in Little Rock’s).
Of the four musical groups to perform during Art Amiss, one was The Chicklettes, an all female band from Little Rock. Several of the roughly 40 artists who had pieces on display have shown or sold their work in both cities as well.
“I think there are more commonalties between Fayetteville and Little Rock than Fayetteville and Tulsa,” says Guthery, who recently moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology.
“I don’t really know of any kind of scene like this in Tulsa. I wouldn’t want to insult it and say it’s not there, but it’s very, very vibrant in Little Rock and in a way it’s the same way in Fayetteville. There are a lot of people who go back and forth.”
SIGNS OF GROWTH
Like everyone else, indie kids have to grow up sometime.
One of the most interesting things to develop out of the Arkansas alternative scene in recent years is the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative.
Founded in 2000, the Little Rock group claims about 100 members, many of whom have or have had ties to the central Arkansas indie scene.
Some of the cooperative’s activities this year — like its third annual Punk Prom held in May — bear marks of that history. Others have made conscious attempts to make inroads with different audiences.
In July, the collective held a film series of “spaghetti Westerns” as well as workshops on topics ranging from watercolors and sewing to hip-hop and spoken-word poetry. Forthcoming events include a Sept. 18 fashion show and a major annual art sale scheduled for after Thanksgiving.
The organization’s ultimate goal is to establish a community art space that might provide studio and gallery space to visual artists and rehearsal and performance space to musicians “at little or no charge,” says Amy McClain, one of the cooperative’s co-founders. Board members are looking at the downtown area as a likely location and are optimistically projecting that it might be a reality by the end of next year.
The group, which earned 501(c)3 nonprofit status in January 2001, has found that managing its ties to alternative culture has required a delicate balancing act.
McClain stresses that board members are very aware that many people could potentially be turned off by too strong a tie to youth culture. But at the same time, the cooperative doesn’t want to risk alienating those in the indie world either. As long as central Arkansas’ alternative scene continues to grow and thrive, it likely will benefit from that excitement as well.
“I think that’s the thing now,” McClain says. “There’s a handful of people here in town — or maybe more than a handful — who have a lot of energy and want to make things happen and want things to go on in Little Rock.
“I think the town that’s tossed around a lot is Austin [Texas]. They have this sustainable artistic ecosystem there that makes it so it never wanes really. It stays consistent and that’s everybody’s goal for Little Rock — to build Little Rock up to the point where Austin is, where if you’re an artist Little Rock is a place you can come to and work.”
