Coalition of the Willing

In the past couple of weeks we've almost tripled our average daily readership, and we've started to get all kinds of positive feedback from bands and local music fans that dig what we are doing. Honestly, we can't believe that people care enough to come on here every day, and we're really glad that people use the comments as a forum to express some of their own opinions about music in DFWD, even if their opinions are sometimes dumb. It has really been quite a thrill. Thanks.

But enough with the sentimental crap. Because of this new interest in the site, it has obviously become much more work to keep up with everything every day. So we've decided to do two things. The first is to form a loose partnership with the podcasters over at dconstruction. We like what they do over there, and even if we don't always agree with everything they say (although we agree with much of it), we think they are smart guys that have some exciting ideas about what local music media can be all about, and we want to play a roll in that. In short, this partnership will consist of the following:

1. We will write a bi-weekly column for their site
2. We will make a weekly concert pick and put it on their site
3. We will compile our own "We Shot JR Music Podcast" which they will put together and feature on their site. This will be a podcast of local music selected exclusively by us, and we think it is going to happen once every couple of months.
4. We are going to plan some dconstruction/weshotjr concerts for some time in the near future

In the interest of full disclosure, we should tell you that one of the dconstruction guys, Robert, is the owner of Summer Break records. We will restate this fact every time we mention any of the bands on his label, and we certainly will not let this affect our opinions on his bands (he doesn't know who we are either, so he can't track us down and kick our asses or anything). If we say something negative about any of them, then you'll know that we haven't let our relationship with dconstruction affect our review in that particular case. If we say something nice about one of his bands, I guess you'll have no way of knowing if we are being honest or not, so you can believe whatever you want. We will always post the disclaimer, however, just to remind you of what is happening. Hopefully that doesn't bother anyone. We will say that the guys at dconstruction don't know who we are, and this will not change.

This leads us to the second thing we are doing. Since the design on this blog is really pretty basic (we didn't really design ANYTHING, did we?) and the space we have is quite limited, we are going to make a move in the next couple of weeks to a new website, Weshotjr.com. This will allow us to have more room to do more things, not to mention the fact that we will (with the help of dconstruction, who is providing the site for us) get some actual web design done on the site, making it a little more pleasing to look at. The important part, however, is that we are going to expand what we do. In addition to my regular writing and the It List, we're going to try to get a few other people on board to: take pictures at concerts, do an occasional concert review here and there (to help us save some gas money), write a regular column on local visual art and galleries, etc. and have an occasional writer or two that we like come in and write about books, media, and other things that interest us. The site will still be ad free, and will pretty much be the same thing, just bigger and better. We're not sure about all the details yet, including when this move will take place, but we'll let you know when we find out.

So, we ask two things from you:

1) If you want, go on to this comment thread and provide us with any suggestions you have for making this site better , along with any other ideas, criticisms, or questions you might have concerning what we do or what we are planning to do.

2) if anyone is interested in taking pictures or videos for us REGULARLY, or is interested in doing a little writing ( including a REGULAR local art column with text and pictures), please email us at weshotjr@yahoo.com. No real experience is necessary, just a knowledge of (and good taste in) music, as well as access to what you need to do the job (your own camera, etc). We can't afford to offer you anything in return for you work (other than making you a little more cool, and probably getting you into some concerts for free), so you'll just have to look at it as a little exposure and some experience.

We also will not meet in person with anyone we work with, since this can all be done over the internet, and we figure we don't want to get to know any of you anyway. Just kidding, but we feel that it is important for the site to remain anonymous, so that is how we're going to keep it.

Hopefully everyone likes where this is going. We do. And you should always listen to us.