THE BAND MOM is TEN!!!

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT: today is The Band Mom’s TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!

I’ll never forget to be grateful to Chuck Meyer and Dana Young for pushing me into really going for it in a pivotal moment – their Hidden People “Hormones” EP was my very first add, beginning its campaign for the CMJ charts ten years ago now to the day. (RIP [kinda] CMJ. And this band’s main website was a MYSPACE! Told you it was ten years ago.)

To bookend this decade with possibly even too fine a point to feel real, I got this email from a beloved client literally yesterday. Feels great to have that kinda thing to show for myself! That’s what it’s all about, maaaaan.

My life would be totally different without The Band Mom and college radio in general. Besides it accounting for a majority (if sometimes by a slim margin) of my income & work time over this past decade, it’s a deeply embedded and inextricable part of my social life as well. Over the first 5 years of this company’s life in Brooklyn then these most recent 5 in Seattle, I’ve had 3 different roommates who were former music directors, and 3 others that I met as a direct result of this work. My accountant is a former MD. My computer just broke down this week and a former MD sent me her old one as a replacement! A huge majority of my closest friends have been radio folks (music directors, artists who’ve been clients, competitors/colleagues, and people I’ve met second- or third-degree through all the above). They’ve helped me move; I’ve been to their weddings and birthday parties and met their kids and pets. I’ve been lucky enough to do a fair amount of traveling throughout North America over this decade, and gotten to visit with radio friends in Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, San Antonio, Nashville, Montreal, Portland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Los Angeles, Harrisonburg VA, Lincoln NE, Boulder CO, Lexington KY, Seattle and NYC (before and after those were my homes) and probably a bunch of other places I’m not even thinking of. Where would I be without the people I know because of The Band Mom?! I can’t even guess. Surviving financially hasn’t always been easy (could you guess that freelance work in college radio promotion isn’t the most lucrative profession? I’m also eternally grateful to all my employers at my various side gigs over the years which have helped me stay afloat! And actually most of those other gigs can be traced back to an original introduction via someone I knew through college radio, as well. And I’ve been thrilled to help many radio friends get jobs and gigs too!) – but I’m so much richer for it. It’s an essential part, maybe the biggest part, of who I am.

Although “The Band Mom” as an official entity has always been only me, it would be an obscene lie to claim I did this decade by myself. Thank you so much to all the bands who’ve trusted me with their precious creative work and their hard-earned cash, the stations who’ve played my releases and spent time chatting with me on the phone or via emails, the venues who’ve let me host Band Mom Presents live shows, the professional organizations who’ve put me on panels/interviewed me/nominated me for awards, the friends who’ve helped me stuff thousands of CDs and onesheets into envelopes on countless late nights, Tyrel (of Band Mom band the Terrordactyls) who helped me design this website and made my logo, and anyone else who’s lent a helping hand or a listening ear along the way. I also want to say thank you here to my parents, who raised me to believe I was powerful and deserved to follow my dreams, and empowered me to take risks and pursue career satisfaction over more traditional forms of work/life security, even when they might not have understood exactly what I was doing or why it felt important to me to do it, and have always been there to celebrate my achievements with me along the way. You folks are all why I can continue to do what I love for a living, and I am never not grateful.

I might as well mention: if you’ve got new music coming out in the next few months and you’re thinking of sending it out to radio, I’d love to talk! Drop me a line at jenn (at) thebandmom.com . Word on the street is I’m pretty good!