Our First Birthday: A Reflection On The First Year Of One Night Music

Posted on 02/11/10 by   Ryan Andersen

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One Night Music turns the big one this week and we celebrate this awesome community.

If I were granted a single wish on this special occasion, I would wish that in the second year of One Night Music I have the honor to continue working with such amazing people to build the community that is One Night Music. Nothing emerges as more of a pleasant surprise to One Night Music's magical unfolding in its freshman year than the way folks have jumped on board to help steer this ship with such enthusiasm and passion into an unforeseen sea of creativity and collaboration.

I had the initial idea of One Night Music in the fall of 2008 and since then it has grown to be cultivated by over 30 contributors who have volunteered their time to bring their own unique perspective to the project. What started out as a fun idea to record some local songwriters in Santa Barbara has grown into a thriving musical community engaging illustrators, photographers, videographers, audio engineers, authors, songwriters, bands, and community organizers from across California, and even as far away as the East Coast, to collaborate and create a new online musical venue of independent music.

What follows are some thoughts and reflections that I would like to share in honor of the one-year celebration of One Night Music.  If you desire to leave us a birthday wish or to share your thoughts on the first year of One Night Music, write a comment to this article at the very end.

The Beginning

In the Fall of 2008, my twin brother Ian Andersen and I began engaging in discussions about creating a website. Ian had been designing websites since high school and we knew that we would work well together in collaboration. We became a bit downtrodden after our first few ideas quickly dissipated. Then one night it hit me. I'd just purchased two very high quality microphones and some recording equipment and I'd always had a passion for audio engineering. I would invite local singer-songwriters to come to my home studio to record a live set of their music and Ian would share it with the world through a website. I was so certain that this was the right project for our collaboration, that I immediately went online to buy the domain. My initial idea was to call it One Night Stand Music. Luckily, that domain was taken and my search for variations resulted in One Night Music. It had a ring to it and I purchased the domain. So began One Night Music.

The Original Gangsters

I immediately turned to my very close friend Megan Sullivan to excitedly ask her if she would like to help out with this so-called One Night Music. Being a music aficionado, there was no convincing to be done - she would help to coordinate and communicate the artists we would record. She quickly coordinated Meghan Lehman, Kyle Nicolaides, and Erland Wanberg as our first artists to record sessions.

A couple days before our first session with Meghan Lehman, I came to realize that my good friend, filmmaker, and past artistic collaborator, Elia Vargas was returning to Santa Barbara after a visit to South America. The timing was too perfect, if not prophetic. I contacted him over email and asked if he might be interested in filming our first session. Once again, there was little convincing that needed to take place: Elia was also a music lover and thrived off of collaboration. We suddenly had a video project on our hands, and the potential of One Night Music began to take life.

The Evolution

The vision of One Night Music is unchanging: to share the music of independent artists through high quality video and audio without charging the artists to record and without charging the visitors to enjoy. How we achieve this vision has continually evolved, perhaps defining one of the best aspects of the project: the culture of openness we've developed in allowing it to unfold as it may, letting new creative ideas run their course.

In the beginning, our description of a session was a very intimate nighttime performance that was filmed in my bedroom studio with a single singer-songwriter, two microphones, a single camera, and a tiny audience of usually no more than 4 people. These parameters produced some excellent performances and some great memories of good nights with good people. For a while we strictly abided by these parameters as what we sought to define One Night Music. But, in due time, we began to loosen the restrictions on our parameters as we felt the need to explore a creative diversity of circumstances. Today a session might be at day or night, include a single singer-songwriter or a whole band, occur in any location indoors or outdoors, or have any number of people in attendance. The bottom line is that we want to capture unique live performances of independent artists and share them on our website. If there is music playing and we have a video camera and a microphone, we'll record it. But the session still remains the core content of One Night Music.  We have also developed a thriving blog on the website where we feature a diverse selection of fun content including play lists, artist follow-ups, and low-fi recordings of live performances.

The Heart

A year into One Night Music, Ian, Megan, and Elia continue to be the heart of the project. Appropriately, the four of us have formed what we call the Board of Gurus (a lighter take on a Board of Directors), which engages in critical discussion about the creative development of One Night Music.

The Medium

Ian continues to build the website on weekends and at late hours after his long workdays. Many companies would pay big bucks for the expertise in web design and online optimization that he applies to One Night Music voluntarily. Ian provides the medium through which the community of One Night Music is enabled to express itself. It's not any stretch to say that it is virtually impossible to find a web designer of his caliber that is not only willing, but also passionately engaged to build an online music community voluntarily. Given the amount of work that Ian devotes to One Night Music after working sometimes as many 50 plus hours a week at his job, he sets a standard of what One Night Music can strive for and achieve without the use of money. Not only that, but I personally feel that he harnesses a cutting edge understanding of web development and integration that gives One Night Music the ability to express our content in a very applicable manner. Just over a year ago I had no idea how my brother and would apply our desire to collaborate, and now it seems so clear that this is exactly what was supposed to happen. To share a project such as One Night Music with my brother is a dream and I look forward to many more hours of work with him on this project and many more collaborations in the future.

The Smile

Before I invited Megan to help out with One Night Music, she had become my best friend in Santa Barbara. We would spend weeknights together playing music and drinking wine. She was a blessing to me in Santa Barbara at a time when I needed a good friend. Megan always had a way with words and communication, harnessing a gentle and unassuming demeanor that I immediately knew would fit perfectly with One Night Music. She also had an impeccable taste in music and knew a bunch of artists around town. Megan started her involvement with One Night Music simply by booking artists, but today she engages far beyond communication. She has taught herself how to edit audio and video and now regularly produces sessions, adding her name to an admirable line up of music on the website. Megan is also a phenomenal writer and has been instrumental in cultivating a culture of creating very high quality written content for the website - a feature that has been applauded many times by our visitors. Megan's soft-spoken and humble contributions along with her incredible attention to detail to produce very high quality content make her an integral part of the heart of One Night Music. Not to mention I have the pleasure of working beside a great friend and one of the best laughers in the world. It truly is an honor to be able to work with Megan on One Night Music and I thank her for keeping me grounded, encouraging smiles, and reminding me of the true nature of One Night Music.

The Connection

Elia and I had worked together in video/music collaborations throughout college and after college. I recall a conversation I had with Elia around a year before One Night Music was started, shortly before he left for Guatemala, in which he predicted that someday he and I would start a grand project together that engaged a community of people to create media. The specifics of his premonition weren't clear, but the concept excited both of us deep down and I've never forgotten that prediction. Now a year into One Night Music, it's clear that Elia successfully predicted the future. Today, I am delighted to say that the person I have artistically collaborated with more than anyone else in my life lends his filmmaking, community building, and future-predicting talents to One Night Music. Elia has many skills, but his most cherished is his ability to connect One Night Music to a broader musical and artistic community, exposing the project to veterans in the field of indie and DIY music and bringing newbies into our community. Elia is constantly pushing the envelope of creativity, applying his passion for experimental art to One Night Music with beautiful results including new takes on the concept of a "session," collaborations with other artistic venues in the community, and new methods for engaging a larger community in this project. Elia has emerged as a vital quarter of One Night Music's heart and a driving force in its creativity. It goes without saying that I express much gratitude to have the opportunity to continue to collaborate and I look forward to many more years of work together - whatever forms that may take.

Ian, Megan, Elia and I are a team. We began as friends, we've developed as colleagues in One Night Music, and we emerge at the end of the day as friends again. And my friendship with all three of them is stronger and better for it. I love them all immensely and cannot express enough gratitude for joining me in creating One Night Music.

Our Community

In One Night Music a community of volunteer contributors, music artists, and visitors has been born. The contributors share their artistic talents, collaborating to create the media and artwork for the website that showcases the music of the artists. Then our visitors enjoy the work. One of my favorite parts of One Night Music is to witness new collaborations and friendships emerge as a result of creating sessions and other content for the website.

The Contributors That Make It Happen

Contributors make up the core of One Night Music - they are the folks without whom we'd have no reason to celebrate our birthday. They record and edit audio and video, illustrate portraits, snap pictures, write stories, edit content, and engage our online communities - they create all the artwork and media for the website. And they do this all voluntarily. In fact everyone who works on One Night Music does it entirely voluntarily. This was a decision we made from the start, suspecting that the cultivation of a music community would maintain the highest honesty and integrity sans money. Thus far, this suspicion has proven to be true: our Contributors continue to create incredibly high quality work because they are doing it out of the passion to be a part of an awesome music community. It is beyond my wildest dreams to consider that One Night Music would involve a team of over 30 contributors a year in. To these folks I am incredibly grateful that they have decided to marry their talents and passions with One Night Music, for without them we would have nothing to share. Words often seem futile to express my gratitude to the Contributors because, given the nature of the project, I haven't even met a lot of them in person. But should they have the opportunity to read this, they must know that how crucial they are to allowing this community to grow and thrive and, when I see them in person, the first round is on me.

Candice Davantzis is my old roommate from Santa Barbara and has taken on the role of Content Editor for One Night Music. She has become instrumental to ensuring that we continue to have high quality content and give the website a unique voice. She already knows that I love her very much and think she's just the most precious toddy ever, but I would like to thank her here.

Stephanie Gonot has emerged as a film editor for One Night Music, filling a very important role that enables us to launch sessions once a week. She also takes photographs for sessions. I'm very thankful for her commitment to One Night Music and, though she's one of the Contributors I've never met, I feel like she's a strong part of our team. Thanks Stephanie!

Cian Riordan is the first person that has emerged outside of the four Original Gangsters to produce sessions for One Night Music. Besides representing a very important step in the development of One Night Music, he has been nothing but extremely easy to work with so far, bringing an exceptionally high work ethic and production value to One Night Music. His presence on the One Night Music team has quickly become very prominent by way of his own initiative and he will prove to be instrumental in raising the bar on the standard of the quality of content that you will see from One Night Music both in regards to audio and video in 2010. We're very excited to have Cian on board as a Producer for One Night Music in our second year.

There is no doubt that the compliment we get on the One Night Music website the most is that the illustrations of our artists are rad. Often artists have told me that they're most excited to do a session with One Night Music in order to receive an illustrated portrait. The illustrations have come to represent One Night Music to many people and they have helped to add a beauty to the website that simply would not exist otherwise. Our team of illustrators is the coolest team of illustrators ever: Karen Nedivi, Hannah Jewett, Amelia Altavena, Jennifer Kindell, Myles O'Donnell Lawson, Alex Vacar, Crystal Allen, and Molly Hahn. Thanks dearly to all of you for your incredible artwork.

Thank you also to the amazing contributions from Scott Boone whose photography set a new standard for our website when he snapped pictures for Alex and Janel; Laura Birshan as the original photographer for One Night Music; Michael Albright and Micha Elizabeth for their filming contributions; Ashley Rodholm for her film editing and filming; and last, but absolutely not least, Matthew James DeCoster for helping to build our Facebook community.

The Artists That Share Their Music

Of course we wouldn't have anything to share on our website without the artists who allow us to record their music. When we started One Night Music we struggled to find ways to convince artists to participate in the project. It was, in large, just a theory at that time. However, at this point we never have a problem finding artists to record. In fact, we have so many artists reaching out to us to record that we struggle to even respond to all of them. So, thank you to the artists that have participated in One Night Music in the first year.

The Visitors That Make It Worth It

We have engaged online communities through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, and our newsletter. Online communities are sometimes dismissed as being laughable for the petty ways in which some people engage them. But they also afford an extraordinary means to sharing music through video. Though I'm not personally engaged with most of the individuals of our online communities, I am incredibly thankful to them for continually supporting One Night Music by visiting our website and being so responsive to our videos. Without the engagement of our online community we wouldn't have a reason for creating One Night Music. All of our online communities are showing strong growth after one year and we look forward to continuing to expand them in our second year to engage more people who will enjoy what we have to offer.

By The Numbers

One of the best ways to express the development of One Night Music in its first year is by sharing some numbers.

  • We have grown from the original four Contributors to over 30 Contributors that volunteer their time to create the artwork and media for the website.
  • We have featured more than 40 artists through our sessions and blogs, giving artists the opportunity to share their music through online video.
  • We have created 176 videos of music that have been viewed over 32,000 times.

All of this in a year, entirely by volunteers.

Where We're Going

One Night Music's great growth and development in its first year has been guided by an enduring integrity and honesty that has ensured that we always stay true to our vision of building a community that showcases to our visitors the music of independent artists through high quality audio and video recordings; and that we achieve this without charging the artists to record, thereby helping them in their musical endeavors, and by never charging visitors to enjoy the content that we produce. The second year of One Night Music will continue to be guided by this integrity and honesty, but in this context we will allow the creative evolution to unfold as it may, all the while building our team of Contributors, creating new types of content, and continuing to diversify the type of music and art that we bring to the website. Thank you for your support and continued participation in what has grown into the community of One Night Music.

With endless love and gratitude.
Ryan Andersen
Founder of One Night Music

This blog post was written by

Ryan Andersen