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FEATURE
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF THE LAWRENCE MUSIC SCENE
JAKE LERMAN
The walls and doorways of downtown Lawrence have known the taste of countless thieves. The neon papers jockey for attention with loud fonts bugging passersby to take notice.
But behind the miles of sticky tape lies more than mere brick and mortar. These walls have held up the ambitions of generations of musicians hoping to one day trade their filers for billboards and maybe even fame. Some have prospered and are still remembered. Others are long forgotten.
This cycle continues today. Old names have been exchanged for new and the music keeps flowing steadily out the doors on Mass Street Lawrence is still the most essential music town between Denver and Chicago, but it isn't as easy as it once was for local bands to make it here.
The economic downturn has made audiences less eager to pay for tickets to see local bands, and has left some venues struggling. Social media sites like Myspace, Youtube and Facebook have made the need for self-promotion even greater. Musicians without the know-how or want to promote themselves online to drive audiences to local clubs have found it increasingly harder to get bookings.
What Lawrence still has, of course, are multiple venues, several talent buyers and eager performers forging a fertile music community. Discussions with band members and others highlight some of the challenges Lawrence has offered over the years.
Lawrence earn its reputation as a prime city for musicians. The group, which has done extensive national and international touring, helped inspire an entire subset of American music. Often described as spanning the genres of indie, emo and alternative rock, The Get Up Kids are well acquainted with all that Lawrence has offered musicians over the years and the cycle its communities and venues fall into.
It is bands like The Get Up Kids that helped 08 8 19 10
The band's drummer, Ryan Pope, currently lives in Lawrence but grew up in nearby Olathe. Before The Get Up Kids, Pope was just another music lover who would often make the pilgrimage to Mass Street to go record shopping. Lawrence represented a musical hotbed, and even as a teenager he grabbed the city by its horns. In fact, one of Pope's earliest performances was at The Bottleneck's open mic night as a 13-year-old.
For The Get Up Kids and many other budding bands, Lawrence was a source of inspiration. For music lovers rooted in small towns, Lawrence's first gift came in the form of nationally touring acts passing through.
Lawrence let devoted fans see acts they wouldn't have seen otherwise. This feeling went
full circle for The Get Up Kids in the 1990s when they became the band locals were lucky to see.
Brett Mossiman has owned The Bottleneck for the past 25 years. He was around when the band began to hit its stride and became a national force. "They prospered from being around at a time when word spread quick," Mossiman says. "They became very big, very quickly. In the scheme of things they might be the largest band to come out of Lawrence."
In 1992 when The Get Up Kids returned to Lawrence on a national tour, The Replay Lounge allowed the band to capitalize on their popularity with an all ages show. Pope remembers being slated to play and having the show get called off right as they were about to go on. Not wanting to forgo the appearance, the band moved the concert to a house three blocks away and the show went on.
Today, a local band can seldom create a draw big enough to sell out The Bottleneck. The shift has been hard on the local music scene. In part, this is due to a trend that many bands playing today see in audiences nationwide. It seems, thanks to advents in technology like Facebook, Myspace and the ease of home
recording, people are simply less focused on live performances, playing today see in audiences nationwide.
The DIY attitude that allowed The Get Up Kids to successfully pick up and move its show to a nearby house was something that the venues themselves couldn't offer musicians in Lawrence. It was rooted in a communal determination of the fans and the bands to simply play music no matter how it had to happen
However, even back then, the community in Lawrence wasn't always so enthusiastic. Pope says when his band started out there was an unwelcome sense of competition. This conflicted with the view of Lawrence as a near idyllic place for musicians. It wasn't until The Get Up Kids forged a tight-knit community with bands like The Appleseed Cast and The Anniversary that things began to turn around.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
Cowboy Indian Bear is one of the more prominent acts in Lawrence today. The band has been written about in local publications like The Pitch and INK magazine and in the past