Featured Interviews
February 16, 2023 | Fritz Hahn, Olivia McCormack, Alexis P. Williams
April might be the cruelest month, but February is the dreariest. Recent weekends have brought bone-chilling cold and drizzle falling from slate-gray skies — the kind of days when there doesn't seem to be much reason to leave the living room.
Cherry blossoms and picnics are on the horizon. We just need to power through these late-winter doldrums first. We know the couch is comfortable and motivation to put down the remote is in short supply, but we found seven things to do around town that are worth the effort: opportunities to get out, have some fun, meet up with old friends or make new ones.
From comedy nights to themed dance parties to guided meditation, here are ways to brighten up the gloomiest of late-winter days. And none of them, we promise, will make you shiver.
February 14, 2023 | F11 Podcast ft. Kevin Deal & Brandon Gorrie
On this episode we welcome Washington DC-based concert photographer Jordan Grobe, who has photographed many famous artists like The Foo Fighters, Stevie Wonder, Lizzo, The Smile, The Black Keys, St, Vincent, Interpol, Fleet Foxes and many more. We talk about the world of concert photography, how to get into it, and the uniqueness of being concert photographer in the Capitol of the United States of America.
July 2, 2021 | Andy McSweeney
Andy chats with Jordan Grobe about managing concert photographers and digging into archives as a communication coordinator for 5 major Washington venues, becoming a budding music photographer in his own right, and (of course) some talk on the early days of working the camera.
July 2, 2021 | Daya Benami Narasimhan
After 10 fond years, Washington, D.C. music fans said goodbye to one of their favorite music venues when U Street Music Hall shut down in early October. The independent music venues that have long lined the likes of U Street and 18th Street in the music district of the city are now in danger of closure because of the dire financial implications of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced crowd-gathering spaces such as music venues to shut down in March, and will leave them among the last community pillars to fully reopen, since music venues are generally not designed for social distancing. Unable to accumulate revenue to sustain obligations like rent and taxes, independent venues face severe financial consequences, with limited governmental support to help.
October 16, 2020 | Daniella Byck
The Save Our Stages virtual music festival happening on YouTube this weekend may not include any musical performances at DC venues, but its series of very cool posters does have local origins. Jordan Grobe, a communications coordinator with I.M.P.—the company behind 9:30 Club and The Anthem—commissioned the 35 designs, highlighting performers such as the Foo Fighters, Phoebe Bridgers, Gus Dapperton, and Dave Matthews. (The 9:30 Club is featured in a festival segment on activism).
October 5, 2020 | Dead Air / Official Tapes
The mission of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is to preserve and nurture the ecosystem of independent live music.
May 8, 2020 | M.K. Koszycki
There’s something to be said about the energy a live concert carries that no other form of live event can quite capture. The joy of being packed in with anywhere from dozens to thousands of other fans in anticipation of experiencing a favorite artist live, and the shared communal experience it creates, is one that’s particularly missed in our current era of social distancing and nonessential business closures. At the time of writing this, it’s been well over a month since said shutdown, enacted in the hopes of quelling Covid-19’s looming threat. While it’s obvious why this had to happen, many people reel in its wake, for personal and professional reasons. And while the nation eagerly awaits safely attending shows again, we spoke to three DMV residents who are all lifelong devotees of music and involved in the local scene about how they’re coping, what their relationship with music looks like right now and recommendations to tide us over until we’re all packed in at a show together again.
March 30, 2020 | Roger Catlin
In our time of the Coronavirus Clampdown, fans of live music are feeling the void, just as musicians have seen their livelihoods temporarily disappear. The nation’s string of music clubs reliably alive with nightly shows are shuttered and empty as the streets around them. One of the nation’s best-loved venues, the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC is attempting to fill that void by streaming a string of live shows it shot for a public television series that ran a few years back.
October 25, 2019 | Zain Sandhu and Allan Navarro
From the historic, like the Lincoln Theatre, to the state-of-the-art, like The Anthem, music venues in Washington, D.C., have come to define the music culture around the District. Their histories are incredibly diverse and distinct. Though several of them originated to offer spaces for certain genres and initially operated as smaller clubs, they have slowly moved into the upper echelon of the D.C. music scene.
Featured Content
July Issue, 2021 | Jo Phillips
" The “Apple Challenge” is an exercise to train creatives how to find their visual voice / DNA stylistic vision whatever you choose to call it, within photography, writing, design, etc. This title bears little significance as it often changes to accommodate the relevance of the subject matter, but its principal purpose remains constant. That is, to force creatives to think, explore, experiment, and play at a higher level than they ever thought possible. To break away images already present in our minds; to break from repetitive views of work we see on a daily basis and to bring an original vision to the fore. Easier said than done!
In this competition (the apple challenge) photographers were tasked to create hundreds of photographs of a simple object in a single session without breaks (washrooms and sustenance exempted); in this case an apple (hence the “Apple Challenge”).
They were limited to using 1 camera, 1 prime lens (no zooms), 1 light source, 1 nondescript background, no props, and no internet access, no post-production and no gimmicks. Plain and simple a light, a camera and action, all in one sitting."
September 5, 2019 | Roger Catlin
Third Man rocker and his young audience stomped through "Seven Nation Army"
May 30, 2018 | Lake Schatz
Published Writings
"Typhoon’s Offerings begins with a warning:
“Listen, of all the things you’re about to lose, this will be the most painful.”
“Listen, of all the things you’re about to lose, this will be the most painful.”
In seventy minutes, across three movements, this Portland-based ensemble exposits how it feels when a mind and its environment seem to detach from the past at precisely the same time."