Earlier today, local music site We Shot JR announced it would discontinue posting in October, after almost five years of turning people onto new bands, turning them away from others, and generally being the honest look in the mirror every music community needs. That’s what I will remember most. Not the criticism of other bands/people, but the championing, passionately, of bands/people they liked.
Sometimes they were jerks, yes. Sometimes they picked on bands I like. Sometimes they picked on me. Almost always, they had the most rambunctious comments section of any site around. More than anything, they were a vital, necessary voice, and one that will be sorely missed.
I had a chance to chat, via Gmail, with site founder Stonedranger about why the end is near.
ZC: why end the site now?
12:20 PM SR: well, first of all we’ve been doing it for nearly five years, and i think in some ways we’re just sick of doing it. Another reason is that I moved to Chicago, and its been very difficult trying to cover a scene that I really can’t be a part of. Also, some of our other writers and associates have moved on to more time consuming jobs and things of that nature, and collectively we just don’t have as much time to work on it as we’d like
ZC: what were the goals in the beginning? and do you think you accomplished them?
12:22 PM SR: well its kind of tough to say, exactly. I think my initial goal, the day I started it, was to learn about the local music scene and see if there was anything that I liked that I just hadn’t been hearing about in the Observer or from friends or whatever. And I guess I figured if I was able to attract some readers, that maybe people making the kind of music I liked would feel that they had a place to go and talk about it, and that this could help develop a small scene and make Dallas more fun
12:23 PM well it certainly made things more fun for me
12:24 PM and i do feel like we were able to support and showcase some musicians and artists that might not have received coverage elsewhere, so as far as those modest goals, i’m pretty happy with whats happened over the years
12:25 PM ZC: one of the things, to me, the site certainly accomplished was providing an outside voice, no matter what people may have thought of that (and oftentimes, they were talking about the comments section, not you guys directly). Do you think there is anyone out there who can fill that void?
12:31 PM SR: Well I think we started the website at a time (January 2006) when the idea of blogging about underground and/or local music was a relatively novel idea, at least when you consider the number of blogs covering just local DFW/Denton music, for example, that you find today. I think one of the reasons why we were able to establish a “voice” is because a) basically no one else was doing a similar local music website at the time, and b) we weren’t afraid to be critical of things that we felt deserved criticism, which was made easier thanks to the anonymous nature of the site. So, to be honest, I don’t know of any websites in the area that are even really attempting to do anything all that similar. Some people think thats a good thing, I’m sure, but thats for readers to decide I guess. Is there anyone out there who’s capable of doing what we’ve done? Absolutely. Is there anyone out there really doing it right now? Not that I’m aware of.
It’s not that its all that difficult, and it doesn’t require journalist credentials or even an amazing knowledge of music. you just have to be willing to say what you want and willing and able to work on it every single day
12:34 PM ZC: That’s what I always like about WSJR, even if I didn’t always agree. You said what you wanted to, even if — and i guess especially if — it was almost guaranteed to rub people the wrong way. a lot of times, the people who go to shows have as many sacred cows or whatever as the writers who cover them. and you weren’t necessarily picking on easy targets.
i guess there wasn’t a question there.
12:35 PM but one of the things we’ve talked about in the past was how people were going to “expose you” and take away the anonymity. which, to me, wasn’t important. i think plenty of people knew who was behind the site. it was more the idea that you TRIED to stay anonymous and keep that part out of it.
12:38 PM SR: yeah, i mean to be honest, when i started the site, i decided to make it anonymous mostly because i thought people weren’t going to like it or that they wouldn’t take it seriously because i was “just some guy.” i can admit that for sure. but i also wanted to do it because i wasn’t interested in making friends in the music scene. i felt like the writing would be more honest and i wouldn’t feel pressure to go easy on someone or write a glowing review if i wasn’t involved too personally with the subjects i was writing about.
12:39 PM this didn’t work out even close to perfectly of course, but i still feel like i did a fairly good job staying out of the music social scene for the most part, or at least hiding in the corner
12:41 PM ZC: when you moved to chicago, the site had fairly ambitious plans about branching out into other local music communities, taking it national (on a certain level). that never seemed to work out. did you think at the time that leaving would eventually result in this?
12:43 PM SR: yeah i pretty much figured it would result in ending it unless we expanded the scope of the website to other cities. our plan to do that was a decent one, but again, with all the time constraints we all have and the fact that its very hard to organize a staff of people across the country to do a lot of work for free, it just never worked out in the way we felt like it needed to in order to do something we could be proud of
12:44 PM ZC: last question: what moment of the site’s history would you say you’re the most proud of?
12:45 PM SR: hmmm thats a good one
12:48 PM you know there are a lot of things that im proud of– i’ve met a lot of great people and had worked really hard on some writing that i’ve been proud of. But to me, the most exciting moment was when we had our awards show at the Fra House in Denton. We had two stages going on at the same time on the same property. There seemed to be several hundred people when I got there, but I couldn’t be sure because the police shut the party down about 5 minutes after I arrived. So with many of the acts stil left to play, the guys at the Fra House decided to send the show to two other locations– the bands would hop on to a bill already going at Secret Headquarters, another DIY space, and the DJs and dance acts would head over to Majestic Dwelling of Doom. There was just something about that night– all the chaos and all the people, going back and forth between two really exciting shows– that just made it feel like it had all come together, and I remember thinking: THIS is why i wanted to do this. To create my own fun.
12:49 PM the show was in 2007, forgot to say that
