Making a Scene Presents

There was a time when an independent musician could still pretend the old system might eventually work out. Maybe the right manager would show up. Maybe the algorithm would suddenly turn generous. Maybe a label would finally care. Maybe streaming would lead to touring money, and touring money would lead to merch money, and merch money would somehow turn into a stable life. That fantasy is running...

Making a Scene Presents - The Indie Artist’s Field Guide to Booking the College Circuit There is a certain kind of silence that only happens on the road on a Tuesday afternoon. The van is full of cables, hoodies, and half-finished gas station coffee. Friday and Saturday look decent. Sunday might work if the room is right. But the middle of the week is where a lot of tours quietly bleed out. That i...

Making a Scene Presents - Why Networking Still Runs the Music Business There is a lie floating around the modern music business, and a lot of artists have swallowed it whole. The lie says your career is built on content. It says your future lives inside metrics. It says if you post enough clips, chase enough trends, and feed enough short-form platforms, the machine will reward you. Maybe you will...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Claire Lugar of the Minnesota Music Resistance! Minnesota Music Resistance is a Minneapolis-area grassroots music activism collective built around a simple idea: local music scenes can do more than entertain, they can organize, raise money, and protect community. Through benefit shows and artist-led action, the group channels the energy of the Minnesota mu...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Boone Froggett of Otis OTIS is a blues-based rock ’n’ roll band born out of Kentucky’s deep musical tradition. The Commonwealth is famous for producing more country stars per capita than anywhere in the U.S., but Kentucky’s musical roots run far wider than country alone—stretching from bluegrass and gospel to rock and rhythm and blues. OTIS pull...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Dan Leary of Institutional Green Institutional Green is a St. Paul, Minnesota rock trio that turns sharp writing, lived-in musicianship, and Twin Cities grit into what the band itself calls a kind of “heartland indie rock hot dish.” The group features Dan Leary on vocals and bass, Kevin Henretta on guitar, and Billy Dankert on drums and vocals. Their debut...

Making a Scene Presents - Why Direct-to-Fan SMS Marketing Is Beating the Algorithm Your followers are not your audience until you can reach them without asking a platform for permission. There was a time when building a following on social media felt like building a community. You posted. Your fans saw it. They liked it, shared it, showed up, bought a shirt, streamed the new single, and maybe brou...

Stop Chasing Virality and Start Building a Sustainable Micro-Label Ecosystem Today There is a scene happening in bedrooms, garages, basements, back rooms, and half-finished home studios all over America right now. An artist finishes a song, posts a clip, refreshes the numbers, waits for the spike, gets a little bump, and then starts over again. The song is real. The work is real. The hope is real....

Making a Scene Presents - The Living Room Circuit How to Book House Concerts Turn Them Into Touring Infrastructure The van pulls off the highway just after dark. Not into a club alley. Not behind a theater. Not into the sad side lot of a bar that promised “great promotion” and forgot to mention the Tuesday trivia crowd. This time the GPS leads you into a quiet neighborhood. Porch lights glow. A do...

Making a Scene Presents - Why Micro-Sync Licensing Should Be Part of Every Independent Songwriter’s Business Plan There was a time when independent songwriters were told to build a career around a miracle. Write the great song. Record the great track. Get it in the right room. Hope the right person hears it. Maybe a publisher. Maybe a supervisor. Maybe a label-connected gatekeeper who still preten...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Eliza Neals Eliza Neals is a Detroit-born blues-rock force, and on her 13th studio album, Thunder in the House, she leans fully into the elements that have always made her sound hit different: grit, soul, spirituality, and the unmistakable heartbeat of the city that raised her. Growing up on Acacia Street on the outskirts of Detroit, Neals absorbed a wide...

Making a Scene Presents Gerry Casey's Interview with Slady Slady is an all-women tribute to the legendary Slade, built for fans who still love the raw energy, big choruses, and stomping glam rock spirit of the 1970s. Fronted by Gobby Holder, alongside Davina Hill, Donna Powell, and Jem Lea, Slady captures the fun, attitude, and larger-than-life sound that made Slade one of the most unforgettable b...

Making a Scene Presents - Making Money Before the Release, Not After There is a bad habit baked into the modern music business. An artist spends months writing songs, paying for recording, fixing mixes, shooting photos, cutting videos, building cover art, and lining up a release date. Then release day comes, the music goes live, everybody posts the same link at the same time, and the artist waits....

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Dave Miller Dave Miller has been writing songs, performing, and living the working-musician life for five decades. Over the years he’s played everywhere a good song can land—taverns, dance halls, coffee houses, showcases, concert venues, and festivals—touring coast to coast across the United States and into British Columbia. He’s the kind of artist who doe...

The Moment You Stop Calling It “Just A Home Studio” There’s a quiet moment that happens for a lot of U.S. indie artists. It usually hits when you finish a track at home that actually holds up in the car, on earbuds, and on a cheap Bluetooth speaker. Not “good for a bedroom.” Just good. You bounce the final mix, upload it, send it to a friend, and they say the one sentence that changes everything:...

The Van, the Laptop, and the Lie We Tell Ourselves The van smells like reheated coffee, gaffer tape, and the kind of optimism that only survives because musicians are stubborn. The band is parked outside a rehearsal space they pay for by the hour, and instead of loading in, they’re huddled around a laptop like it’s a campfire. The screen is a crowdfunding draft page with reward tiers, shipping pro...

Making a Scene Presents - The Playlist Era is Fading Picture the modern indie grind for a second. You drop a single, you refresh your stats, and you squint at that tiny spike hoping it turns into a staircase. Maybe you’re watching Spotify for Artists and tracking what happened after you pitched, posted, begged, and boosted. Spotify will happily show you audience behavior, segments, and trends, and...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Erik Vincent Huey Erik Huey grew up along the Monongahela River in West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania, the son of four generations of coal miners. That background runs deep in both his life and his music. He was raised in a world shaped by working-class struggle, Appalachian tradition, and the kind of hard-earned perspective that never really leaves yo...

Guy Verlinde is one of the most respected and enduring figures in the Belgian blues scene. Over the past two decades, he has built a remarkable career as a singer, songwriter, and performer, becoming a leading voice for blues music in Belgium and far beyond. Since emerging as a major presence on the scene, Verlinde has recorded 17 albums and established himself as an artist with both deep roots in...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Don Arbor Don Arbor is an award-winning songwriter and video artist whose lifelong connection to music began before he was even born. As he tells it, his first musical influence was hearing his mother’s beautiful soprano voice while still in the womb. Not long after, he started singing himself—and he has never really stopped. http://www.makingascene.org

Every spring, touring season rolls in like a weather front. The calendars fill up, festivals come back to life, and venues start answering emails a little faster. And every spring, the same truth shows up right behind it: if you want a real career as a musician—solo artist or full band—the job is performing. The job is the road. The job is showing up over and over until strangers become fans, fans...

Making a Scene Presents - The Psychology of a Productive Home Studio The home studio looks like a room, but it behaves like a brain. It remembers what you do in it. It trains you through tiny cues. It rewards you for finishing. It punishes you for drifting. And if you’re a working artist, it can either become a quiet engine that prints masters and income, or a beautiful trap that keeps you “busy”...

Making a Scene Presents - Why Most Indie Artists are Underpaid Data Workers THE NIGHT AFTER THE EXPORT The song is done. The mix is printed. The master is bouncing. For a few seconds, you get that clean feeling that only musicians understand. You made something that didn’t exist yesterday, and now it does. Then you open the upload screen and the second job starts. http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - How to Create a Local Music Scene How indie artists can “Make a Scene” again with AI, Web3, and real-world hustle If you’re waiting for your local scene to “come back,” you might be waiting a long time. That’s not because your town stopped caring about music. It’s because the pandemic didn’t just shut down venues. It broke habits. It changed what people consider “worth le...

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Duke Robillard Duke Robillard is one of America’s most respected guitarists, singers, songwriters, and bandleaders, celebrated for his mastery of blues, jump R&B, swing, and roots rock. Over the course of a long and influential career, he has earned a reputation as a true musician’s musician—an artist whose deep knowledge of American roots music is matched...