Yesterday’s launch of Reveille Magazine probably didn’t send much of a tremor through Condé Nast, Rolling Stone, Spin, yadda yadda, but I regard anything that puts my buddy Jim Walsh back in a saddle, writing what he wants to be writing, a good thing. Likewise, I am favorably disposed to music writers writing like music writers — with all the occasionally indulgent stuff that goes with that.
At the get-go, Reveille Magazine is composed of Walsh, Managing Editor Andrea Myers (who is still editing HowWasTheShow.com), Steve McPherson (who is still posting to SignalEatsNoise.com), Kyle Mattson (of MoreCowbell.net), Rob van Alstyne (allegedly the world’s tallest music critic, and like several others here, formerly of the now defunct Pulse), and finally, Tom Hallett (author of the Pulse “Round the Dial” column.
In the grand tradition of start-up music mags, no one is getting paid for the foreseeable future. Labors of love, baby. And don’t you know Avista Capital Partners and Dean Singleton would love to swing a little of that action? But Myers says she’s schmoozing an advertising agent to plan for the happy eventuality of revenue. Until then, “it’ll probably be like a part-time job for me,” she says. Twenty hours a week of collecting copy and freshening the site. (My guess is she’ll have a better idea of what to do with Walsh’s stuff than the dour matrons who made life so miserable for him at the Pioneer Press.)
Myers expects to divide the news, features, and reviews (live, CDs, etc.) amongst the corps of writers listed above, with columns by Walsh and Hallett. But she has her antennae up for good writers of diverse musical persuasions. (I’m her guy if she needs 40 inches on Satanic S&M Metal.) “I have been talking to a jazz person lately,” she confesses, “so something might happen there.”
She’ll do a bit with Mary Lucia on The Current this Thursday, “a little before five.”
Cut to Jimmy Walsh, recently released from police custody after The Great FREE Freeway Caper. Walsh’s Friday night “Hoots” — free jam sessions/tag team concerts in the basement of Java Jack’s (46th and Bryant, Minneapolis) — have caught on very nicely. He’s even taking the damn thing on the road to New York in a couple weeks.
“Dude,” said Walsh, speaking of Myers, “she’s a ball of energy and really smart.”
Right. OK. But tell me, old man, what is the void a magazine like this fills in the Twin Cities market?
“The void is that there are a lot of talented, hungry writers in this town who are young and have really no place to put their stuff. Beyond that there are some pretty basic needs, like essays, which historically have been the life-blood of rock journalism.”
As Walsh knows well, “feature” arts stories in daily newspapers are basically preview/interviews or trend pieces, usually reworked for the local market after showing some kind of popular traction elsewhere. It has been a long, long time since any of our papers have let an arts writer muse or thumbsuck for any serious length about something the writer felt passionate about. In the absence of any “hot trend” as an obvious hook, I mean.
After all, why give people who enjoy the arts AND reading anything unusual or unexpected to read?
Walsh, by the way, just finished his book, The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History. It’s due out November 15th.
Also, if you’re the type who likes to test just how cool you are — or aren’t — Reveille Magazine is throwing a party for itself this Saturday at 9 p.m. at The Nomad, across from the Cedar Cultural Center on the West Bank.
I’ll be the guy in the Tijuana Brass World Tour ’69 t-shirt.
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