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In the continuing search to connect music fans in Charlotte with local music in our community, radio has long been a missing element. “The one glaring problem in this town is a true, well-respected, wellregarded independent radio station,” says local music aficionado Don Koster. A group of committed and dedicated local musicians has addressed that concern head-on by forming Charlotte Indie Radio, an Internet-based radio station that “plays Charlottearea original music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Charlotte Indie Radio claims to be “the first all-local music station in the country to be designed, created, funded and operated entirely by local musicians.” Yes, there are WGWG, WSGE and WNCW, each of which does a fine job, but all are miles from Charlotte, sometimes difficult to pick up here and target a similar segment of the overall music community (i.e., Americana and its respective subgenres). Thankfully, each of these stations has also been hugely supportive of local music. But Charlotte Indie Radio supplements them as the first station to scream “Here’s Charlotte music” across numerous genres.
Charlotte Indie Radio is the second project of CharlotteMusician.com, a group formed and driven by Brian Hartzog. Hartzog, a musician himself, says the group “decided to do projects that help everybody on the local Charlotte indie scene.” The group’s first project was a compilation CD, Uptown Sound (see sidebar).
Like other local initiatives, such as the Tosco Music Party, the Charlotte Music Awards, the activities of the Charlotte chapter of the NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International) and genre-specific endeavors such as the Charlotte Blues Society, the Charlotte Folk Society and the Charlotte Jazz Society, www.CharlotteMusician.com is all about enhancing the profile of the local music community.
Hartzog outlines the goals of Charlotte Indie Radio as follows: To provide a way for local musicians to get their original music heard To enable Charlotte music lovers to listen to local music from their computer at anytime To provide a place where music-industry professionals can stay upto- date on the Charlotte music scene To create new opportunities for Charlotte-area musicians to connect directly with the local music scene.
“The Charlotte area is rich in talent and diverse music styles,” Hartzog notes. “We are dedicated to providing a place for artists, bands and singer/songwriters to have their original music heard.”
Once a local artist has a recording, how does it get heard? “You know, you can’t sell music that no one hears,” Hartzog says. “You can’t get people to shows if they don’t know about your music. If we can solve that and all the obstacles of getting heard in the mainstream media, then a station like ours gives artists something that they don’t otherwise have.”
At the national level we’ve seen a different approach to addressing the problem recently in the highly publicized debate over John Mellencamp’s decision to allow a tune off his newest album to be used in a TV commercial. He claims that it’s the only way he can get exposure for the album, given the absence of commercial radio airplay for his genre of music.
According to Hartzog, the radio station was one of CharlotteMusician.com’s original ideas, but there was no funding for it at that time. Then Alan Kaplan started booking songwriter rounds—usually three performers trading off on playing their own music and then coming together for a few numbers. The participating artists were given an option of contributing their performance money, or a percentage of it, for the radio station.
“Before I knew it,” Hartzog says, “we had the money for our first year’s budget. So I put together a team of volunteers, all of them songwriters, artists or producers or some combination thereof ” to make Charlotte Indie Radio a reality.
The early feedback on Charlotte Indie Radio has been overwhelmingly positive.
“Everybody has been really excited,” Hartzog says. “And we’re already in the top 25% of all live365 (the Internet radio site that hosts the station) stations in our genre, and the average listening time is around 50 minutes.”
Charlotte Indie Radio “gives independent musicians some encouragement,” says Trip Rogers, whose music appears on both the radio station and the CD compilation. “Sometimes you feel like there’s absolutely no way to get anybody to hear your stuff.
I don’t know if people understand how important it is for you to feel like you’re doing something worthwhile. This station gives us all that little bit of inspiration that keeps us working and keeps us writing.”
Alan Barrington, another local musician who is on the station and the Uptown Sound CD, says that “Brian has worked tirelessly” to get Charlotte Indie Radio underway. “He’s helped out so many people, and the whole community really owes him a huge thank you for what he’s done. The radio station wouldn’t have happened without Brian and his vision really to help pull everybody together and get it done.”
“I can’t say enough about guys like Brian,” Rogers says. “Here he is, working a day job and also has his own music career, which with everything else he’s doing for the music community, sometimes we forget to pay attention to the fact that he’s also a very gifted musician himself.”
Although the station has not yet begun to have deejayhosted programming—that is a short-term goal—there are programs already in place. The station has more than 60 artists in rotation now, and the number is expanding daily. The current schedule for Charlotte Indie Radio is as follows:
7 a.m.–9 a.m. ~ “Laid Back Carolina Sounds” (‘easy to listen to’)
11 a.m.–1:30 p.m. ~ “Bands of the Carolinas” (live music from around the Carolinas)
3 p.m.–5 p.m. ~ “Guys with Guitars” (guitar-playing Carolina guys)
8 p.m.–9:30 p.m. ~ “Rock Rap and Crunch!” (rockin’, rappin’ and crunchin’ bands)
A recent late-night set included a diverse cross-section of local artists including Tesser, Michael Everitt, Stevens Mill Band, Tom Eure, Robin Rogers, Bill Noonan Band, Jackie Moseley, Rick Spreitzer and Fooling Betty.
Charlotte Indie Radio is continually pursuing local music to showcase on-air and a larger listening audience as well.
Find the station at www.live365.com/stations/charlottemusic
~ Michael Evans
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