Turn off this blog and go outside.

I first heard Rocky Votolato when he opened for The Get Up Kids at the Metro back in 2004. Anyone who has listened to him--especially the album Makers--will immediately note the incongruity in having these two people/groups perform at the same show (though that lineup wasn't nearly as perplexing as that of a show I attended soon after, which featured Motion City Soundtrack, The Get Up Kids, Thrice, and...ready for this?...Dashboard Confessional--no show before or since has had a greater diversity of tattoos and screaming teenage girls). Rocky's name was printed on my ticket, but he was the first of two opening acts, and I didn't yet have the respect I now do for such people. I didn't bother looking him up before the show, figuring I'd spend his set checking out the merch tables or trying to wheedle my way to the front row. I--like most everyone else there--hadn't given a moment's thought to who he was or what he sounded like, figuring it would be the same brand of loudish, indistinguishable alternative rock concertgoers half-listen to before the group they came to see goes on.

Rocky Votolato

So when a single individual with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica walked out onto the stage in front of the other groups' equipment, introduced himself, and went into a rhythmical, folksy, and entirely acoustic first number, the crowd fell silent. We were intrigued. 1100 people had come to see a rock show, and this was not rock. But it wasn't bad. In fact, it was very, very good. We were silent throughout each song--so silent, in fact, that he thanked us for being so attentive to him, considering we'd come for something very different than what he was playing. Undoubtedly, Rocky Votolato had followers before that show, but we certainly hadn't known of him. Now we did. And we liked what we heard.

Since then, Rocky has become one of my favorite musicians, and I've found countless others who play in a similar (though always original) vein--The Civil Wars, for example--all because I randomly discovered him while trying to hear someone else.

A somewhat similar thing happened to me a few weeks ago. My wife, who has introduced me to more music than I can remember, pulled up a band, Milo Greene, which she'd heard while watching a TV show. She'd known immediately I would like them, and when I came home from work one day, she had them pulled up on Spotify--a service I'd long shunned because, frankly, I felt like it was just a way for people to brag about the hipness of their musical tastes. And the band was amazing. For two weeks, I listened to nothing else.

But then I got curious. I began to peruse the "Related Artists" section of Milo Greene's Spotify profile, and, lo and behold, there was good music there, too. Not all of it was good, obviously, and some of it I liked but knew I'd never listen to again. But some--well, I couldn't tear my ears off of it. Like The Lonely Forest. I honestly don't know what I've done without them my whole life. I can look back and literally re-imagine cross-country drives that would have been (even more) life-changing had I taken them while listening to "Turn Off This Song and Go Outside." And so, I'm beginning a bit of a journey here. I've started to hop from group to group, looking for related artists I like. When I find one, I listen to them for a while. Then I search their related artists. In this way, I've found music that is new, music that is old, music that's been hidden from me for one reason or another.

And occasionally I will blog about what I find, how I found it, and what about it I like. So. If you would like one more way of finding new (and new to you) music, let me do some of the work for you. If you have bands or artists to suggest, please do. And I promise I'll provide some dry humor along the way.

Happy listening.