Neal McCoy: Rednecktified

Neal McCoy got his start in country music working with Charley Pride at 21-years-old and released his first album in 1991.

His discography now includes 10 records, including three platinum albums and one gold. He was voted Entertainer of the Year both in 1998 and 1999 and won Video of the Year in 1997 for “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye.”

However, McCoy says the acknowledgment that he is most proud of is the Academy of Country Music’s Humanitarian award, which he received in 2005.

“That’s a real recognition of helping folks, helping your community, the good things you do in life,” he says. “You don’t do it for the recognition, but for someone - especially a great organization like that - to pat you on the back and say, ‘we know you’re not doing it for the recognition, but we see it and thank you for it,’ it feels good.”

McCoy and his wife started their own charity foundation 14 years ago called the East Texas Angel Network to help children with serious and life-threatening illnesses.

“It’s something were very proud of,” McCoy says. “We’ve raised a lot of money and helped a lot of families. We’ve raised almost $5 million dollars and we’ve helped over 400 families in our community. It’s a real honor to the folks of East Texas who want to help their own.”

McCoy has been on somewhere between 15 to 20 USO tours over the last seven years, visiting soldiers across the U.S. and around the world. He has been to Iraq seven times and Afghanistan twice.

“There’s nothing like having an opportunity to thank our soldiers,” he says. “There are great soldiers all over our country and all over the world who are taking care of us and doing their job, and we just think it’s very important to thank those folks. I appreciate not just those who are serving now, but also our veterans who have served I the past. Anyone who has served in the U.S. military, I’m very proud of.”

McCoy spends 7 to 8 months out of the year touring. As he doesn’t prepare a set list before he performs, no two Neal McCoy shows are exactly alike.

“It makes every show fun for me and for my band because we don’t know what’s coming next,” he says. “We all have to concentrate on what’s going on. With some musicians that have set lists, everyone knows what’s coming next, and I think you just kinda get into a rut. You lose some of that excitement.”

McCoy is known for on-the-spot covers of other songs as well, including some that he has never rehearsed with his band.

“We just do whatever comes to us,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll just start singing and maybe a band member or two will know it and maybe they won’t. Sometimes we screw it up more than we do it any good, but that’s fine. Our shows are just real honest.”

So what can audiences expect from his set at this year’s Jamboree?

“Who knows?” McCoy says. “I don’t know because we don’t have a set list. Just expect to have fun. If you’re a Neal McCoy fan, you’ll probably hear the songs that you’ve hopefully grown to know and love from us, our hits. Other than that, it’s just going to be wide open. There’s no telling what you’ll hear, but we think if you stick around for the whole show, you’ll have about as much fun as you’ve ever had.”

Published in the 2008 Oregon Jamboree program

Glen Campbell: Rhinestone Cowboy

Maybe you know him from his numerous hit songs, such as “Wichita Lineman” or “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Maybe you know him from his television show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which aired from 1969 to ’72. Maybe you know him from his role in the 1969 John Wayne film True Grit. Or maybe you know him from his session work with numerous artists, such as Frank Sinatra or the Beach Boys.

However you know Glen Campbell, it’s hard not to admire the man whose versatile career has spanned four decades.

“I think the singing and the playing probably come out on top,” he says. “I [was] just blessed to get the songs that hold up over time, basically the Jimmy Webb stuff. You know, I think Rhinestone Cowboy will be a fixture for ages to come.”

In the ’60s, Campbell was part of the Wrecking Crew, a group of session musicians who worked with a variety of well-known artists in Los Angeles.

“We were all in the Musicians Hall of Fame because we played in all of the sessions that came out of L.A. at that time,” he said. “Strangers in the Night, Nat King Cole, the Beach Boys, everybody. We were the band.”

Campbell’s solo career took off when he released “Turn Around Look At Me” in 1961. He is recognized as one of the first cross-over artists and he made history in 1967 by winning Grammies in both the pop and country categories. In 1968, he won CMA’s Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year.

In addition to his music career, Campbell broke into television with his television show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, a musical variety show that featured numerous guest stars, such as Neal diamond, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash and Ella Fitzgerald.

“When I had my TV show, I worked with about everybody,” he says. “The TV show was great because I got the big artists singing with me and it was fun.”

In 1969, Campbell costarred in True Grit alongside John Wayne. He had no acting experience before the part and he says his “record’s still clean.”

Campbell’s daughter, Debby Campbell, has been performing live with her father since 1987.

“We have a lot of fun,” he says. “Our relationship is great. We basically like the same kind of music.”

This summer, Campbell will release a new album, titled “Meet Glen Campbell.” The record, which will be released August 19, features covers of songs from a variety of artists, such as Tom Petty, U2, Green Day and John Lennon.

“It really came together,” Campbell says. “There are some good songs in there. We chose them for the songs that we wanted to do rather than any particular artist or any particular writer.”

Campbell says his set at this year’s Jamboree will feature his classic hits as well as a song from his new album.

“You’ll see Glen Campbell and whatever it is I do,” he says with a laugh. “Playing and singing.”

Published in the 2008 Oregon Jamboree program

Eugene's Metal Mayhem

The dynamic local music scene you've probably never heard of (but will).

“Make some noise for yourselves, not for us. We wouldn’t be shit without all you motherfuckers,” growls Paco, vocalist of local metal band Only Nightmares, during their set at Goodfellas in Springfield.

Metalheads gather to the left of the stage, smoking cigarettes and drinking PBR tall boys. To the right, bar regulars play pool and drink whiskey. Directly in front, fans - both male and female - rock out, moshing and throwing horns. Up on stage, Only Nightmares take out their aggression through their music – loud, fast, deep heavy metal that reverberates off the walls of the dive bar.

Goodfellas is one of many local venues that regularly features bands from Eugene’s metal scene - a scene that, while still somewhat underground, is growing rapidly. Fans and musicians comprise a tight but open community that has spawned talent from a variety of metal genres, from death to doom to thrash and everything in between.

“It’s metal, but it’s also a brotherhood that we’re forming,” Paco says of the local metal scene. “This is our family. These guys [in Only Nightmares] are my brothers… It’s giving people a way to vent, you know. People will automatically think, 'oh, metal, stigma,' but we’re actually trying to get people together and have a good time.”

Local metalheads have shown over and over that their goals are not anger or alienation. “They’re really respectful of each other and really polite, which really creeped me out at first,” says Andy Larson of Monday With A Bullet. “At punk rock shows, which is mainly my background, they’re spitting on each other, saying ‘fuck off’ and whatever. There’s not as much of that here. They’re here for the music, not the party, which is so much better.”

While there are definitely cliques within the scene, for the most part the bands and fans make up a pretty close community. The terms “brotherhood,” “solidarity” and “family” are thrown around constantly. And because of the small number of bands and venues, groups of varying metal genres often play together on the same bill with harmonious results.

“We love the music," says Tobby Lugo of Grynch and We Have Guns. "We just want to go up there and headbang, go in the mosh pit a couple times.”

The downside of the close-knit community is that rumors and gossip spread like wildfire. For example, when Boots of New World Sinner’s former band Severein broke up, it didn’t take but half an hour for the first MySpace message to roll in: “Dude, I heard.”

“You’ve gotta be careful what you say because you represent your band wherever you go,” says Angie Anderson of New World Sinner.

The majority of the bands in the Eugene scene feel a sense of camaraderie and help each other out in any way they can. Bands help each other book gigs and loan each other equipment at shows in times of need, says Nick Harris, who is currently in three local bands - Digital Violence, Side of Right and Desteria. Larson says that most of the time, Monday With a Bullet doesn’t even book its own shows; instead, other bands ask them if they would like to play.

“You’ll see a lot of the same bands on the same bill a lot,” says Blake Owens of Northwest Royale. “It’s a real grassroots thing as far as I can tell. It’s the same thing as it was when we were first coming up. Bands just call each other - ‘Hey, what are you guys doing this weekend? Want to
get a show together?’”

Approximately 20 bands rent storage units at West 11th Archery as practice spaces. “In my opinion, the heart of the Eugene metal scene stems from the West 11th Archery jam rooms,” Harris says. “Almost every single garage there is home to a band...I started jamming out there around 2001 and I met a bunch of cool people. I’d just be hanging out there [and ask,] ‘Oh, nice guitar, can I play that?’ or ‘Can I beat on your drums a little bit?’ So I know a lot of people that way.”


News of upcoming shows spreads mostly by word of mouth. Venues usually place show listings in the Eugene Weekly, but bands are now employing more aggressive promotional tactics to draw in new metalheads. Local metal band The Athiarchists have started what they call “rogue flyering” for their upcoming CD release party: grabbing handfuls of flyers and posting them everywhere, even in the bathrooms at WalMart and Fred Meyer. But overall, band MySpace pages are considered the best way to promote as they list all upcoming show dates and can be updated regularly.


The radio provides another outlet for getting out the word on metal happenings, especially KFLY FM’s Local Lixxx, which announces upcoming shows in addition to keeping an online concert calendar and message board.

“I like to think of Local Lixxx as the bat signal of local metal,” DJ Carl Sundberg says. “I want to provide a forum for local bands to get their words, ideas, shows and music out there.”

One of the best ways for local metalheads to find shows is just to show up at venues and see what’s going on. The Downtown Lounge, John Henry’s, Samurai Duck, the Black Forest and now the Oak Street Speakeasy all host local metal shows on a semi-regular basis.

“I think there was only one time that I went out on the weekend looking for a show and didn’t find one in the whole three years I’ve been really involved in the scene,” Boots says.

Of all the venues that host live metal shows, Samurai Duck is far and away noted as everyone’s favorite.

“Everyone keeps referring to Samurai Duck as the heavy metal Cheers,” says Abe Nobody of Rye Wolves. “Our town is small enough where we can all give each other a smile and a nod.”

Samurai Duck has live shows every weekend and often during the week, and when there is not a band playing, metal blares through the stereo. A television flickers behind the bar, a picture of Dimebag Darrell taped to the screen. It has not been turned off since the day he was fatally shot in 2004.

“Samurai Duck is the only bar that caters to nothing but metal,” says Brandon Dunnavin of Only Nightmares. “Fuck hip hop, fuck making a bunch of money, we want to have a place just for metal. That’s the only place here that’s done that. I’d like it if they’d upgrade their toilet facility, at least get the door to close, but that’s metal.”

The biggest problem with the Eugene metal scene is the lack of all-ages venues. Other than the WOW Hall and the McDonald Theater, the only other regular venues are bars.


“It sucks all around for everyone,” says Albert Evans of Ladon. “You have the WOW Hall that charges out the ass to rent for shows and is very selective on who they let in. The McDonald Theater is going under and still won't cater to local metal bands. You have a couple of community halls in town like the Irvine Grange Hall, but the locations really suck for kids to get to and you always risk the cops shutting you down.”

Samurai Duck plans to become an all-ages venue, says Stephanie Osburn, who is in charge of booking at the Duck, but it will be a long and expensive process, mainly because as it stands, alcohol is visible from everywhere in the bar. The entire bar will need to be remodeled before it can be opened up to minors.

The main reason metal bands have a hard time finding venues that will host all-ages shows is the stereotype that metalheads are violent or unpredictable. “They think all the kids are going to go crazy and start breaking shit and starting fights,” says Wes Beanblossom of Tormentium. “Metal is an insurance liability.”

But Osburn says that she rarely sees problems at the Duck. “The metalheads are the nicest group of people,” she says. “You see your brother or sister get knocked down in the pit and people pick them up, dust them off, make sure they’re comfortable and everything’s okay...They just want to keep it a calm scene. They want to make sure they continue to have a place to play and enjoy.”

Even though Eugene is a college town, Aaron Tunnell of the Athiarchists says that he rarely sees people from the university at shows. The lack of college students could be partially due to the shortage of outside promotion. Last fall, Lugo attended an open seminar at the WOW Hall with members of the local media and asked the Eugene Weekly why they continued to downplay the local metal scene. Their response? According to Lugo: “Who’d want to listen to that anyway?”

But apparently a lot of people do, as the Eugene metal scene continues to flourish and keeps growing with more bands, more shows and more venues.

“I have always felt like metal is in my heart, (and) the bands here in Eugene have put it into my soul,” says Aimee Manley, a local metalhead. “I just hope that someone reads this and decides to take a chance and come out and see a local show and pass the word. It's our scene to make bigger and we are the ones that can launch the bands here to greater things beyond.”


Photos, top to Bottom: Mitch and Paco of Only Nightmares; Shane Hepner of Monday With a Bullet; Boots, Nick Marquez and Angie Anderson of New World Sinner; Ray of Tormentium headbangs to New World Sinner's set at Samurai Duck.


Published in the Oregon Voice

Too Small to Row?

Of all the high school sports I could have tried out for, I chose the one in which I had zero experience: crew.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

When I decided to join the team, I knew almost nothing about crew. All I knew was that I wouldn’t have to take a P.E. class and that the team was co-ed which, as a 14-year-old girl at an all-girls school, was enough. Early mornings? No problem, I thought. Full body work out? Easy! Ice cold water with leeches? Wait a minute …

So, needless to say, I was in for a huge surprise. I still remember my first day of practice. I reluctantly rolled myself out of bed at 4:30 a.m., wondering why I had been stupid enough to think early mornings would be easy. My dad drove me to practice and I sat in the car, grumpily staring out the window, drinking hot chocolate and wishing I had tried out for soccer instead. I was thoroughly unprepared, wearing tennis shoes, track pants and a huge sweatshirt to keep myself warm.

Practice started at 5 a.m. My teammates and I lined up on the shore by the boat house; a motley crew to be sure. We tried to focus on the instructions given to us by the coach, a stern-looking woman greatly lacking any sense of humor, but we were too distracted by the varsity boys and girls carrying boats to the water, strolling right in as if the water was warm.

Then it was our turn to carry the boats, which, as it turned out, was much harder than the varsity teams made it look.

“Ready, and up,” our coach shouted, and we raised the boat above our heads.

At 5 foot 2 and 100 pounds, I wasn’t a whole lot of help. Even standing on tip-toe I couldn’t hold up the boat, not even when it rested on everyone else’s shoulders. I just stood there with my hands high in the air, pretending to help so that the coach wouldn’t yell at me.

“You should be a coxswain,” everyone on my team kept telling me. “You’re the perfect size.”

What they really meant was that I was too small to row, but I was determined to prove that, despite my size, I still had power.

“Now, after you put the boat in the water, you want to get in fast and wipe off your legs,” the coach said. “There are leeches in the water and they’ll stick if you’re in too long.”

We started to laugh, thinking she was joking, but her face remained stoic. No, she wasn’t joking. There really were leeches in the water.

Slowly, we hobbled along, carrying the boat down to the water. Those of us without proper water shoes had to walk barefoot, cutting our feet on the sharp shells that littered the shore.

We reached the water’s edge and just stood there, confused as to how to turn the boat around and place it safely in the water. The coach, who was growing increasingly impatient, told us to just drop it in.

So we did and, with a giant splash that drenched all eight of us, the boat was almost ready to go. After loading the oars and pushing off the shore, we were on our way.

I still remember how it felt for the first time, my oar powering through the water, occasionally getting caught on a wave and popping out. Before long, we managed to row in unison; fast, vigorous strokes that pushed our boat forward in an abrupt jerking motion. I hardly even noticed the shooting pain from the shell fragments stuck in my feet or the burn of using my entire body to power each stroke of my oar. Everyone on the boat was smiling with glee. We were doing it! We were moving, and we were going fast!

And then came the boys’ varsity team, passing us in seconds without even breaking a sweat.

So, okay, maybe we weren’t going that fast. But for our first time out on the water, we weren’t half bad.

Unfortunately, our luck ended there. My boat didn’t win a single race the entire year. Half way through the season, our coach pretty much gave up on us, choosing to just let us circle around the bay rather than offering us guidance for improvement. But we didn’t care; we had more fun than anyone else on the team. It wasn’t about winning, it was about camaraderie, and nothing bonds a group of girls together tighter than waking up before the sun is out to brave leeches, ice cold water and a coach who completely ignored us.

I didn’t join the crew team my sophomore year; once was enough. But looking back, the year I was on crew was the year that I grew up. I joined the team as a way to avoid responsibility and meet boys, but I left feeling proud of myself for accomplishing something, even though I never took home a medal. So maybe they were right; maybe I wasn’t cut out to row and should have been a coxswain instead. Regardless, I achieved what I set out to do: I proved that I had power simply by not giving up.

I learned that life isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about sharing the funny stories you remember years later.


Photo credit: Sport-Graphics.com
2001 Southwest Regionals, Sacramento, California
(I can be spotted second from the back looking in the wrong direction!)

A Lifetime Dedicated to Track

Every year, Tom Heinonen records the distance he ran and adds it to his career total. By July of this year, he will hit 70,000 miles, or approximately 2.8 times the circumference of the earth.

More than just an obsessive training log, Heinonen’s accounting of his daily practice transcends and envelops the history of track and field in Eugene, a community in which he has resided for nearly four decades.

Heinonen qualified for the Olympic Trials in the marathon in 1968 and 1972, was instrumental in founding the women’s track and field program as a varsity sport at the University of Oregon in the mid-'70s, guided dozens of athletes to collegiate championships during his nearly three decades of coaching and continues to contribute to the running community in Eugene through his coaching and activism with the UO Running Club and Eugene 08 Organizing Committee.

Heinonen’s passion for track is evident in other ways, too. In addition to his competitive accomplishments, he married Janet Heinonen, another pioneer in the history of women’s track and field in the United States, and he raised two elite runners, Erik and Liisa.

“I feel that I've done more than just be a runner who became a coach, with coaching being simply a job,” Heinonen said.

Heinonen was inspired to start running in the eighth grade because his brother ran track. He ran for his high school and continued running during his college years at the University of Minnesota.

His senior year in college, he competed in the Big-10 three-mile race, held outdoors at the University of Iowa on an unbearably hot day. Heinonen asked a University of Iowa trainer if he could borrow a baseball cap for the race and was given a black hat with “Iowa” written in large letters across the top.

Heinonen competed using his standard running tactic: He didn’t lead early, but began moving strong in the middle of the race, taking a lead far in front of the other runners more than half-way through.

Sweat dripping from his brow, his feet thumping rhythmically on the track and his heart beating loudly in his chest, he ran, winning the Big-10 title for the University of Minnesota – while wearing a baseball hat for Iowa.

“What is the worst thing you could possibly do?” he said, laughing. “Wear an Iowa hat while you’re winning a title for Minnesota.”

After the race, a coach from the University of Wisconsin approached him and asked if he would be interested in training at high altitude in Alamosa, Colo., for the rest of the summer.

The NCAA Championships would be hosted in Provo, Utah, at 4,500 feet of elevation, so the offer to train at high altitude provided an exciting and unexpected opportunity.

Heinonen walked over to his college track coach, Roy Griak, to tell him about the offer.

Griak looked at Heinonen, who, at that point, was the only All American distance winner that Griak had ever coached. Before Griak even had the chance to congratulate his “golden boy” for winning the race, he was faced with losing him for the last three weeks of his college career before the most important collegiate race of the year.

"He just said, 'That’s a great idea,'" Heinonen said, smiling as he recalled the event.

So Heinonen went to Alamosa, and by the time of the NCAA championships, he was ready. During his three weeks of training, he learned to "respect high altitude." He learned tactical approaches for high altitude races, outsmarting other runners by holding back throughout the race and coming on strong at the end.

Heinonen put everything he had learned from his high-altitude training towards the NCAA six-mile race and placed third. This, the final race of his college career, was his best NCAA performance ever.

"(The day of the Big-10 race) I just thought, 'Wow, I won a Big-10 title. I finally did it. Me, me, me,'" Heinonen says. "And the very same day, I later came to appreciate my college coach even more for having sort of let me go in this new direction that we never even thought about."

Heinonen enrolled in graduate school at the University of Oregon and applied to coach the women’s track team, which was relatively new and needed a stable coach to establish the program. He stayed on to coach the team for 28 years.

Not only did Heinonen make a significant impact in UO women's track and field as a whole, but he changed the lives of the individual runners as well.

Lisa Nye, who was on the team from '87 to '92, said she spent her first three years at UO "kinda messing around" until one day Heinonen called her into his office and told her she had to decide if she wanted to keep running.

"He just sat me down and said, 'if you want to be a runner, you have the ability to be a runner, and this is what you need to do, but you can’t succeed with what you’re doing now,'" she said.

Together, Nye and Heinonen created a new training program specifically for her. After just one year of training on what Nye calls the "Tom Heinonen Program," she went from being 99th at the NCAAs to taking third place.

Heinonen won NCAA Coach of the Year twice and has been named Pac-10 Coach of the Year eight times. In 2006, he was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

In 2003, he retired from the women's track team, but he couldn't stay away from the sport. He has been the volunteer coach for the UO Running Club ever since, and he doesn’t plan to stop any time soon.

"It's fun for me because I just get to meet kids and I hardly ever tell them what to do," he said.
"I'm the focal point. They know I'm going to be there; they know I'm going to hold their stuff; they know I'm going to ask what they're doing. We're going to talk; we're going to laugh; we're going to talk about Oregon sports and whatever's in the newspaper. I look forward to it every single day because it's a chance for me to meet with people (of college age) who are interested in what I'm interested in.”

Laura Bocko, the student coordinator for the Running Club, said that without Heinonen, the club wouldn't have any structure.

"Meeting him and being on the Running Club is the greatest thing I've done at [the University of] Oregon," she said. "We’re really fortunate to have such an elite coach."

Heinonen shares his love for track with his family. His wife was a marathon runner and a track journalist. Their children, Erik and Liisa, both ran track.

"We talk the same language and both understand the different dimensions of the sport," Janet Heinonen said. "It's nice that what's important to him is also important to me."

As a child, Erik was responsible for running up 50 steep double-steps to deliver scores to the press box during meets, while Liisa and her friends worked as the basket crew, carrying the baskets that athletes put their sweats in before they ran.

"We were always invited to their house for pizza," Nye said. "Running was just part of their life. I think it was good for all the kids who had come from other communities and saw how running was a family thing for them and what their life was built around. It really gave you a different appreciation for what running could be about just by seeing them."

To Heinonen, running has always been about more than just winning the race.

"For the people who look back on it over the years, they can't remember their (race) times, they can't remember the places, but they remember the friends and they remember the journey," Heinonen said. “Time and again, people who win look back later on say, 'Yeah, I did win and that was the goal, but really, all the work that I did and all the learning and all the friends that I made, that's really what it’s all about. That’s what I remember.'"

Published in Mosaic's Track and Field edition for the Olympic Trials

To Those I've Met Along My Way

By the time I moved to Eugene, Oregon in 2005, I had lived in England, Italy and various places around the San Francisco Bay Area. I was only 19, but I considered myself well-adjusted and able to turn just about anywhere into “home.” But Eugene was different. Eugene was dark and cold and unwelcoming. I had never felt so lonely.

I found the move especially jarring because of how different Eugene was when compared with everywhere else I had lived, especially the Bay Area. While living in California, I would often take the train to San Francisco and spend hours wandering aimlessly around the dirty streets of Haight Ashbury and the Mission district, meeting interesting characters and sharing experiences. Most of the people I met were just tired of being shunned by the world and needed someone to reach out to them and listen to their stories. Once I became that person, I knew they wouldn't harm me. In turn, each and every one of them taught me valuable lessons that I will remember for the rest of my life.

People travel in and out of our lives, yet sometimes it is those we only meet for an instant who can truly change us. The way we treat other people, even total strangers, can have a lasting impact on both their lives and on our own.

It had been more than a year since my move to Eugene - a place in which I had originally thought that I would meet an abundance of new people and have the sociable “college experience” - before a stranger acknowledged me: a man who needed human contact just as much as I did.

I was walking home from school on a cold October morning when I saw him: a Native American man, probably in his late-thirties, with long hair tied in a ponytail and dirt stains on his clothes. He was leaning against a newspaper stand on the busy street corner.

“Hello,” he said, immediately making eye-contact. His soft, friendly eyes were surrounded by harsh wrinkles.

I greeted him back and he asked my name, to which I replied “Jessica. What’s yours?”

He looked stunned for a second, then reached into the chest pocket of his tattered jean jacket, pulling out a long silver chain. As I looked closer, I saw a pendant attached: a small silver horse with its legs outstretched, as if it was running to get away, no more than a quarter of an inch in size.

“Since I moved to this town, no one has told me their name,” he said. “I’m White Crane. Please take this. I want to thank you.”

I shook my head, uncomfortable taking jewelry from a stranger, but he reassured me.

“I want you to have this as an exchange for friendship,” he said. “The next time you see me, just say hello. It’s lonely when no one says hello.”

He held the necklace towards me and dropped it in my outstretched palm.

I carefully tucked it into my pocket as we continued to talk. He told me about his tattoos and his mother, and before we parted ways, he told me that he would do anything to protect his friends.

I never saw him again, but I will never forget him. For the first time since I moved, I didn’t feel lonely any more.

Many people have touched my life along the way, and while I probably wouldn’t recognize them if I passed them on the street today, the lessons they taught me will stay with me forever.

During my high school years, a homeless man approached me outside Amoeba Records on Haight St. He told me about his life and asked if he could recite a poem that he had written himself but never before shared; a beautiful poem about how everyone has an angel in this world. From him, I learned that everyone has an important story to tell, and I was motivated to become a journalist so that I could tell those stories for people whose voices would otherwise go unheard.

When I was eighteen, I met a 30-year-old musician on an hour-long train ride. He told me he sensed a sadness within and said that in order for me to be truly happy, I needed to make a drastic change in my life. He played me the most beautiful music on his Discman, filled with love and passion, then told me that the singer grew increasingly paranoid and jealous, eventually killing his wife. Two days later, I found the courage to finally leave my abusive boyfriend.

The influence we have on others is undeniably strong. Lives can be changed forever by our interactions with the people that we meet along the way. These people came into my life for just a moment, a brief flash before they were gone, yet I will never forget them. They have helped to make me the woman I am today.

As I write this, sitting at my cluttered desk in Eugene more than a year after meeting White Crane, the horse necklace hangs on the wall above me, a constant reminder to have faith in myself and in others. One day, when I am ready, I hope to pass it on to someone else: someone who needs it just as strongly as I did on the day I met White Crane.

Shameless Self Promotion

With the growing popularity of social networking sites, bands are bypassing traditional promotional steps to reach out to their fan base on a whole new level

It used to take years of hard work, grueling tours and a restrictive record contract for a band to “make it” in the music industry.

Not anymore.

On April 28, 2007, just fourteen months after forming, rock band Neurosonic announced via MySpace that they would be playing on the Family Values tour alongside their childhood idols Korn.

Neurosonic front-man Jason Darr is a master at online promotion. He uses social networking sites, especially MySpace, to personally communicate with fans and post up-to-date information about the band.

“We’re on there all the time, constantly interacting with our fans,” he says. “It’s spreading for us right now. [Our page is] getting up to 5,000 hits a day…We’re new and the fact that we’re still bringing in that number of people every day to check us out is a really big deal.”

With the growing popularity of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and PureVolume, many bands are choosing to bypass traditional promotional steps, such as radio, television and magazines, and are instead using these sites to keep in touch with their fans and reach out to new listeners on a more personal level. Bands no longer need record companies or PR agencies to gain publicity. Instead, they are able to promote themselves and speak with their fans directly.

“It’s a one-stop shop,” says Bobby Alt from Street Drum Corps. “You can go to MySpace and you can get the band’s videos, you can talk to the band, you can leave comments, you can buy music now right from MySpace. It’s a great way for people to check out when our shows are…I have been a musician for 20-some-odd years now and when MySpace came around, it absolutely changed my life.”

Before the advent of social networking sites, bands had to think of new and creative ways to reach out to listeners. Mailing lists, while costly and time consuming, were often the most popular form of communication between bands and fans. Mark Jansen of Epica promoted his previous band After Forever in the mid-’90s by sending spam e-mails to potential fans. At the time, the response was positive, but now spam email has such a negative response that bands can no longer use it to their advantage.

“I’m a little proud that I was one of the first people to use spam email,” Jansen says. “I collected e-mail addresses from the guestbooks of other bands and I sent emails mentioning After Forever. I got emails back saying ‘thank you for mentioning this band,’ but if you do it nowadays people just say ‘fuck off!’”

Social networking sites allow bands to send out similar emails without being deleted or ignored and, unlike more traditional forms of promotion, social networking sites are absolutely free for bands, promoters and listeners. They are easy to use and anyone can create a page, leveling the playing field and providing any band with the opportunity to promote themselves.

“It helps bands who are just starting out to really virally spread the word and it gives everybody the opportunity to flick a spark and see if it catches fire,” Darr says.

In the past, record labels have had a monopoly over new up-and-coming acts but due to the rapid expansion of social networking sites, grass-roots promotion has taken the lead and anybody with the right amount of time and motivation can gain popularity without needing a record company or PR agency to back them.

“Any computer you buy nowadays has some kind of recording software on it so anyone can start a band, write songs, record them and have them up online within a day and start drawing their fan base,” says Eron Bucciarelli of Hawthorne Heights.

The benefits are evident for listeners, too, as social networking sites are making underground music more accessible to the public. Whereas in the past unsigned bands had to individually pack and ship demos to fans who contacted them or hand out CDs personally, they are now able to upload songs directly to their networking pages for fans to check out. Better yet, they are able to see how many hits each song has received to gage their popularity, whereas with demo CDs there was no way of telling who actually listened to their music and who just threw the CD into the nearest garbage can.

This type of feedback is embraced by bands and now, thanks to social networking sites, they have the opportunity to easily see their fans’ responses and use that to decide what direction to go in.

“You are so in touch with your fans that you can put up a little survey asking ‘What did you think of our last album? What was your favorite song?’ You can totally gain from that where you should go and what are people liking,” says Robbie Kirkham of The Vincent Black Shadow.

Neurosonic have a poll on their MySpace page that asks “What’s your favorite Neurosonic experience?” and lists “Live Show,” “Album/Single,” “Music Video,” “Meet and Greet,” “MySpace/Official Site” and “Other” as its choices. The site also features a Google map of their current tour and a chance for fans to “demand” that Neurosonic play in their town.

“It’s at it’s germation stage right now; it really needs to blow up,” Darr says of the show requests, noting that once enough people start voting, the band will use that information to plan their tours.

Social networking sites make it fast and easy for bands and fans to communicate on a personal level, adding a whole new dimension to the music-lover’s experience.

“It’s sort of taken that pedestal away from the bands,” Kirkham says. “I think the majority of bands now that are starting out and are trying to get somewhere use MySpace as a way to make life-long fans…We write back to everybody who writes to us. Why wouldn’t you?”

Neurosonic also make a point of personally writing back to every message they get.

“[MySpace] gives us a chance to interact with our fans a lot more. If we didn’t have that, we’d be getting fan mail and have to write back. This way, with the internet, you can just ‘boom, boom, boom,’ respond back to someone,” says bassist Jacen Ekstrom.

While communication with listeners is a huge part of the promotional process, already established bands like Hawthorne Heights use social networking sites as a way to keep their fans updated on their lives.

“Back in the day, bands just had actual mailing lists and by the time the message reached the fan, it was already old,” Bucciarelli says. “As soon as something happens with us we can send a message out to our MySpace account and everyone knows the second we know.”

With so many bands readily available to the public free-of-charge, the competition and pressure to keep listeners interested is growing.

“I think it’s just forcing bands and artists in general, song writers and everybody, to just really hone their craft and offer their fans value,” says Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed.

“The thing about social networking sites and the internet in general, is that you can get what you want when you want it,”says Jake Janzen, a college student who uses MySpace to find up-to-date information on his favorite bands. “It doesn't have to appeal to a wide range of people, so people can watch, listen, and read whatever they want. However, since there is so much stuff on the internet, it's sometimes difficult for potential fans to find [bands].”

In addition, social networking sites, especially MySpace, tend to have irrelevant clutter on the band pages.

“I don’t care about messages from friends saying ‘thanks for adding me’ or any of the spam that they usually get from other bands,” says Sharon Lewis, who prefers looking at bands’ official websites to their MySpace pages. “It takes up too much space and doesn’t mean anything in the band context.”

While MySpace pages may help bands reach a wide audience, some information (such as bulletins and photos) are exclusive to other MySpace users. Although use of the internet is growing rapidly, some people still don’t surf the web regularly or have their own social networking page. Therefore, traditional media is still a vital part of band promotion.

“I still think there are millions of people who aren’t on any of the social networking sites,” Jasta says. “They listen to college radio, specialty radio and the commercial stations, go to shows or hear it word of mouth.”

Radio in particular remains an extremely important medium.

“I honestly feel radio is still a lot more influential [than social networking sites] because a lot of people are in cars or by cars and there’s always a radio no matter what,” says Ronnie Winter of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. “It may not be the best radio, but it’s still a radio. Not everybody has the internet, so I still feel a little more towards the radio side personally. If there were more radio stations playing unsigned bands, it would be a better industry.”

DJ Carl Sundberg, host of The Edge and Local Lixx on Eugene’s KFLY FM, helps local unsigned bands gain publicity by playing their songs on his show. Although some bands still send in demo CDs, he uses MySpace as his primary tool when searching for new bands.

“I use [MySpace] now in more of a business way than a personal way every single day,” he says. “It’s my contact point for so many bands that don’t have any other way to communicate…If a band is legit enough, they have a MySpace page, so I can check out their songs and determine then [if they have] something I’d like to play.”

While there is definitely some competition between traditional media and the internet, Sundberg doesn’t think the popularity of radio or television will ever completely diminish

“The radio will always be there, just like network TV channels,” he says. “They’re always going to be there because it’s a free medium.”

Johnny Evil, founder of promotion and booking company Evil Live, says that printed flyers are still his preferred promotional method as they are invasive and hard to ignore.

“Don't get me wrong, I use the internet quite a bit for communication, but for the most part you need to have a lot of physical flyers and posters to bombard people with,” he says. “If it's all electronic-based, the user can wipe the promotion you've thrown at them from their memory the second they walk away from the computer.”

Although Jason Hale of Chiodos says that one of the best things about MySpace is that you don’t need to tour as much to gain publicity, many listeners still argue that touring is the most gimportant thing a band can do. As social networking sites can be so cluttered with bands, seeing a band’s name on an upcoming show list can drive listeners to search for their MySpace page, especially if they are opening for a band that the listener already likes.

Neurosonic agree, continuing to tour almost non-stop, hoping to build up as much awareness about their band as possible and give something back to those that helped make them a success. After wrapping up their month-and-a-half gig on the Family Values tour in early September, they spent a month touring Europe, documenting the trip in video blogs which they posted online for fans. Upon returning from Europe, they began to tour the U.S. again and have dates booked until early December. Despite their busy schedules, they still check their networking accounts regularly and don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

“The Nintendo Generation is beginning a takeover,” Evil says. “We've been scammed our whole lives into thinking that we need capitalism, that in order to be a ‘success’ in the music industry we need big business. Well, I think there are many people of high intellect that are shaking off that brainwash and are writing a page in history all their own.”