For several years now, I’ve been telling friends, former students, and various acquaintances that they should start a Savannah-centric music blog.
Every one of those people seems to agree with me that we need not just one but probably several good music blogs that follow various aspects of the local and regional scene.
But none of those people have ever followed through.
So I’ve decided to forge ahead with some other contributors on a new music blog: hissing lawns.
The title alludes to Joni Mitchell’s classic album and song The Hissing of Summer Lawns. I have also created a Facebook page for hissing lawns.
Most of the posts will be of direct relevance to Savannah, but not all will. Many will be very short and be visible in their entirety on the home page. There will be lots of embedded media. I used the layout of Brooklyn Vegan as a starting point — that’s a design that should be mobile-friendly.
I know that some people have called Savannah Unplugged a music blog, but it’s not really that at all.
Pretty much daily, I see some music news that strikes me as worthy of publishing somewhere, but it’s often too specialized or too late or too offbeat to warrant a separate post on this site or a whole column in the Savannah Morning News.
And, while I don’t know the exact ages of all visitors to Savannah Unplugged, I do have some pretty good demographic data for the 1500+ people who like Savannah Unplugged’s Facebook page. People 24 and under make up 47.2 percent of all Facebook users (wow), but only 9.1 percent of those who “like” Savannah Unplugged are 24 and under (double wow).
So Savannah Unplugged a) is generally not reaching the young people who are key supporters of a local music scene and b) doesn’t provide a great platform for the music news that potential readers likely desire.
For example, consider the following things that have crossed my desk in recent days that are clearly worth passing along: Black Tusk going on a European tour, Little Tybee booking a Savannah gig, the indie label Furious Hooves putting out its first ever compilation for Cassette Store Day, etc., etc. If I did separate posts about all those things here, they’d simply overwhelm the rest of the content.
So I’m rounding up contributors to hissing lawns and hoping a number of them come through.
There are several newsy posts already up, with lots more content and a few other features on the way in the coming weeks.
I’ll still be posting some about music here, of course, as warranted. Some of you like news about festivals, like to see photo galleries, etc.