That could be the motto of DZ Tapes, the D.C.-based record label Isaacoff started in 2011. At the time, he had decided that simply running a music blog — the now-defunct DAYVAN ZOMBEAR — wasn’t enough. He wanted to take it to the next level. And this Saturday the digital-and-tape imprint celebrates its fifth anniversary with a marathon show at local DIY venue Hole In The Sky.

Brett Isaacoff of DZ Tapes (photo: Julia Leiby)

How did DZ Tapes get here? Back in Isaacoff’s blogging days, he says, he kept receiving great submissions from indie artists — “so much so that I really want[ed] to find a way to share the work that was coming around my e-desk,” the D.C. resident says. “So I figured I might as well put out a mixtape.” He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to put out a compilation. The label followed in its wake.

Now DZ Tapes has several cassettes under its belt, featuring both artists from here and elsewhere. It focuses on bands bringing new energy to D.C. and Baltimore’s underground rock scenes — label alumni include shoegazers Wildhoney and Big Hush, punks Hemlines and the fuzzy Nice Breeze, among others.

Sustaining any project for half a decade is no easy feat — perhaps doubly so considering the volatility of the music industry. But Isaacoff has figured out the formula: keep your expectations low and your planning short-term.

“It’s as hard as you want to make it, really,” Isaacoff says. “I’m just trying to have fun and enjoy myself and help people out.” By booking shows and working with interesting bands, he aims to give back to the scene that gave him — an avid showgoer himself — so much.

Hemlines “All Your Homes,” released on DZ Tapes

Keeping his day job as a business analyst at a solar startup has helped grease the gears at DZ Tapes. “If I could make money off of [the label] I would, but it’s not something that I want to really force,” Isaacoff says. “I feel like blending the lines between quote-unquote business and pleasure might get a little messy.”

A steady path is as good a marker of success as any, though there have been certain high points — like when Rolling Stone published a piece about Speedy Ortiz right before they were to play D.C. house venue The Dougout, a show he booked. “Filled to capacity” isn’t quite the correct phrase for it — the 70-capacity venue was overflowing. “It was an extreme fire hazard, looking back on it,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes’ future remains both certain and up in the air. There’s this weekend’s anniversary show — “It’s gonna be a banger,” promises Isaacoff — and a few more releases slated for the rest of 2016. But for the future-future? Isaacoff isn’t interested in pressuring himself. DZ Tapes is going “wherever it wants to go, really,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes celebrates its fifth anniversary July 9 at Hole in the Sky. 

Atlanta indie-rock outfit Semicircle joined the lineup late after a cancelled gig at DC9. They shared the bill with a solid lineup of locals, including post-rock ensemble Polyon, a new band from Typefighter and Joy Buttons member Ryan McLaughlin; Witch Coast, which released one of the best D.C. EPs of 2014; pop-punkers Qualms, featuring members of Big Hush, Sad Bones and The Bowlcuts; and headliners The Obsessives, a two-piece indie-rock band worth paying attention to this year.

Despite blistering cold weather, eventual snow and a Super Bowl halftime performance from the talented Katy Perry, more than 50 people came out for the Dougout’s birthday. Maybe this time next year, they’ll be celebrating another one.

Semicircle

Polyon

Witch Coast

Qualms

The Obsessives

Brazilian artist and musician Xavero had spent the last six months in D.C.’s Brookland neighborhood taking part in an informal punk-rock exchange program. While the mononymous artist lived here, he spent his time learning English, befriending some of the scene’s elder statesman and for the first time in his life, fronting a D.C. punk band.

That band was Sem Hastro, a temporary group that would nevertheless make a mark on the city’s vibrant, growing hardcore scene. Technically, Sem Hastro disbanded when Xavero went back to Brazil. But it left behind a demo recording that rises from a thick, primordial punk-rock sludge.

In a local hardcore scene that tends to follow in its forebears’ footsteps, Sem Hastro stands out. Over the demo’s five songs, punk bleeds into blastbeat hardcore. The tempo slows. Guitar solos abound. Its spirit resides in a time and place other than 2014 D.C.—maybe the West Coast, sometime in the 1980s, alongside The Circle Jerks and Black Flag.

The songs are also in Portuguese.

“It’s funny,” says Xavero, sitting under a streetlight outside of The Dougout on one of his last nights in D.C. “A lot of people started liking the band because I was singing in Portuguese.”

Sem Hastro’s story is really the story of Xavero, a 24-year-old punk rocker who began swapping emails with local hardcore band Coke Bust from his home in São Paulo more than two years ago. A bassist in his own straight-edge band, Disease, he had contacted Coke Bust vocalist Nick Candela to try to persuade the group to play his city. Later, when Xavero and a friend visited Berlin for an art exhibition—Xavero was invited to paint—they stayed in Europe for the summer and eventually caught a Coke Bust show in Prague. The musician and Candela became fast friends. When Coke Bust finally made it to Brazil in January, they crashed with Xavero.

“In Sao Paulo, we were just hanging out, having a good time after the tour ended,” says Candela, who also goes by Nick Tape. Afterward, Coke Bust invited Xavero and his friends to visit D.C. during the festival Candela and bandmate Chris Moore booked: Damaged City. “It was an insane opportunity,” Xavero says. “I’d never been to America. I really wanted to go.”

In April he came. He had a six-month visa, but just a few English words to work with. When he flew into New York and turned up at Union Station a few days before Damaged City, he called Candela but struggled to say where he was or what he needed. Candela managed to get the message and pick him up. When festival time came, Xavero helped out onsite, selling hot dogs to punk kids.

Even with the language barrier, Xavero made friends. He settled in. As the day of his return flight neared, he realized he wasn’t ready to leave. He asked Candela—who he had taken to calling “Nicktape,” like it was one word—if he could stay on his couch in Brookland.

So Xavero stayed, even while Coke Bust went on tour. By the time the band got back from their West Coast jaunt, Candela had come up with an idea: Let’s start a punk band.

Back in Brazil, Xavero plays in Disease and tinkers with a few smaller projects. But in those bands, he plays guitar or bass. He called his new band Sem Hastro—an intentionally abstract band name that has no English translation—and decided he would sing. In Portuguese.

“It wouldn’t make sense if I were singing in English,” Xavero says. “It’s not my language. It’s hard to write in English. We listen to a lot of Crudos [the legendary Chicago punk band that sang in Spanish]. We knew it would be cool.”

First Sem Hastro wanted to play straight-ahead punk, Xavero says, the songs slower-paced and melodic behind his ghostly, guttural screams. But with the band’s lineup—which included Candela, scene mainstay and Sick Fix member Pat Vogel and Coke Bust’s James Willett—a distinct D.C. hardcore influence crept in.

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in. But it’s still hardcore.” —Nick Candela

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in,” Candela says, referring to himself and Xavero. “But it’s still hardcore.”

The next steps felt easy, Xavero says. They wrote a few songs, practiced four or five times and played their first show at the end of July. The band was a quick hit, says the singer—possibly because they sounded so different.

Six months can fly by. The band played its last show—for now—at the Rocketship Sept. 15. The following week, Xavero boarded a plane.

Under the streetlight outside of the Dougout, Xavero says he doesn’t want to leave. He has friends here now. His English sparkles. He wants to keep pushing with Sem Hastro and see where it goes. But he can’t, he reasons. Overstaying a visa is a mess he doesn’t want to make.

But he’ll be back, Xavero pledges—as soon as March of 2015, when Disease plans to tour through here. Candela says next time, they’re going to work on finding a legal way for him to stay permanently. Until that day comes, the band will be waiting.

Photos, top to bottom: Sem Hastro at the Slam Pad by Michael Andrade; Sem Hastro at the Rocketship by Ron Akins.

“We have a surplus of bands and we’re running out of space,” says Mike O’Brien, an In It Together Fest co-planner who operates his printing business out of Hole In The Sky. Bands’ overwhelming interest in the event—which runs July 31 to Aug. 3 at numerous local venues—stands as a testament to the months of work O’Brien and his fellow organizers have put into what may be D.C.’s first sweeping, multivenue DIY festival.

But while the folks from Hole In The Sky and fellow DIY space The Dougout have handled many of the event’s logistics, much of the heavy lifting—like booking the shows—has been the work of the larger community. O’Brien says the idea was to bring together the city’s diverse and sometimes disparate arts spaces under the banner of a major DIY festival—so participating venues were given dates to work with and told to book the shows they wanted to see.

The result is an eclectic mix: a mishmash of straight-ahead punk rock, spacey fuzz pop, singer-songwriter crooning and various styles in between.

“That is a product of the structure of the fest that we set out from the start to make sure happened,” O’Brien says. He told the venues, “Do whatever you want. We’ll support you in promotion and make sure people know about [the shows].”

Getting the word out clearly has not been a problem. At the moment, roughly 10 bands are waiting to see if they can land a spot in the fest. O’Brien says he and the other organizers are kicking around ideas to fit them all in, including adding new venues—like record stores—and shoehorning them into the already beefy lineup.

Organizers have posted the festival’s most up-to-date schedule on the In It Together Fest website (see the flyer below). So far it includes 17 events at 16 venues—and it’s not all music: There’s an Alley Cat bike race, a drone brunch, a skate showcase, and a centerpiece event Aug. 2 at St. Stephen’s Church. But as O’Brien says, more happenings could be tacked on in the coming days. The heavy lifting might not be finished yet.

Click the image to see a larger version:

Din has just wrapped up a finale to a weeklong run of shows that brought nine bands to Ft. Loko, the Edgewood row house where she lives and books small concerts. The former American University student lives in the three-bedroom residence with two roommates, but she runs the shows herself. For Saturday’s event, she sets up the basement, ushers in the crowd gathered in the backyard, runs sound and points attendees to a stash of earplugs.

“I just hope there’s no moshing around that pipe,” Din says, patting a vertical water pipe fixed in the center of the basement.

At age 21, Din is one of the youngest female show promoters in D.C. Recently, she’s also been one of the DIY community’s most ambitious, hosting five events in May and three in the past week alone. That kind of volume is bold for a house venue. Nearby DIY basement The Dougout booked three shows this month; indie-rock band Paperhaus, which runs a Petworth house venue by the same name, lists only two May shows on its Facebook page.

Ft. Loko is the latest addition to a group of DIY venues located within a few blocks of each other in Eckington and Edgewood, and collaboration among the neighboring spaces is key to its functionality. Lights borrowed from art loft Hole In The Sky are clipped to a ceiling beam. The mini-PA system comes courtesy of The Dougout.

Din cites her own basement show-going as a major reason for renting the place. “When I looked at the house, [hosting shows] was one of the foremost thoughts in my mind,” says Din. “I know the community, and I know that planning and coordinating is a really integral part of it. And that’s a role I’m willing to play.”

April was a tough month for nontraditional venues in D.C. After two years, Columbia Heights performance and gallery space The Dunes was barred from renewing its lease. A management transition drove Tenleytown restaurant Casa Fiesta out of the punk-show business altogether.

When she read that Casa Fiesta was stamping out shows, Din immediately contacted Tenley Empire—the collective that booked gigs at the restaurant—to try and salvage the remaining dates. She agreed to move three concerts to Ft. Loko, doubling the number of shows she had lined up for the month.

“Reaching out was just an instinctual reaction since I had the capability and like the music that they usually bring in,” says Din. “They’re really nice guys and you can tell how much they really love bringing people together around music, so of course I want to help them any way I can.”

Ft. Loko possesses the same scrappy domestic charm that typifies many basement venues: Christmas lights hang from the ceiling, an Ikea carpet doubles as a drum rug and the flush of a toilet upstairs reverberates downstairs. But Din’s space was a welcome relief to Tenley Empire.

“Without her offering up her home, [the shows] would’ve probably had to be canceled,” says Tenley booker Ryan Zellman. Alex Edelmann, who orchestrated Saturday’s garage-pop lineup, says he appreciates Din’s open mind. “It’s super nice that she’s down to host weird hardcore shows,” he says.

Din is aware of how strained relations can become between house venues and their neighbors, so she strategizes to avoid flare-ups that could endanger the space’s future.

“Longevity is the real threat to DIY venues, so you gotta be smart,” Din says. Before her string of shows last week, Din knocked on doors down the block, delivering cookies and handing out her cellphone number. She even offered one concerned neighbor her basement as a music practice space for her neighbor’s son.

“I wanted to communicate that it’s not about partying or money, and it’s bringing the community art and music,” says Din. “Hopefully they’ll respect that more than other vices.”

But like many house venues, Ft. Loko’s situation with neighbors is tenuous. Although there’s been no police intervention, one neighbor claimed to have seen a show attendee defecate in his yard. The chance of earning a lousy reputation upsets Din.

“You don’t want to antagonize the neighbors,” said Din. “You’ve got to let them know it’s not a bunch of [terrible] people who’ve come to ruin your night.”

As Saturday’s show winds down, the bands thank Din and hawk tapes and T-shirts. Show-goers linger in the backyard, keeping their voices respectfully low. Din says that a lot of kids who come to Ft. Loko know the drill: Stay reasonably quiet or risk the space.

Din says she’s happy that this week’s string of shows is over—and she may go to another house party once everyone has left.

But she won’t get too much downtime. Ft. Loko has another show in less than two weeks.

Photos top to bottom: The Sea Life at Ft. Loko by Michael Andrade; Sharon Din courtesy of Sharon Din

But what happens when one of the city’s smallest DIY show spaces begins hosting bands that could fill a club? It’s forced to make tough but necessary compromises.

It’s a Tuesday evening in February, and the Dougout—an unfurnished basement in a group house off of Rhode Island Avenue NE—is mostly empty. It doesn’t look like much, but over the last two years, the house has become one of the city’s premier underground music venues. That’s why it’s being nudged into a more professional setup. The guy sitting on a barstool near the door is a sign of the space’s growth. So are the list of names in his hand and the paper wristbands he’s looping around the wrists of people now trickling through the basement’s exterior door.

Showgoers are here to see a punk-rock band called Iron Chic, which had sold out Brooklyn show space The Acheron, a venue three times bigger than Dougout, just five days before. At last year’s Fest festival in Florida, the band filled a 1,000-person venue to capacity. The Dougout looks like it can fit 60, maybe.

The Iron Chic gig ran the risk of repeating a bad situation the Dougout had seen just two months earlier.

“The Speedy Ortiz show was a [disaster],” says Geoff Shobert, one of the house’s three residents.

Shobert is talking about a show the Massachusetts punk band played at the house in January. Speedy Ortiz is a cocktail shaker of things generally popular in punk rock at the moment: low-fi distortion with throwback, early ‘90s indie sensibilities and a lead singer with a big, sugary voice. Having played basements like Dougout for a few years, Speedy Ortiz is hurtling toward fame: A week before the Dougout show, Entertainment Weekly’s music blog premiered the group’s new single, and the band appeared in Rolling Stone multiple times last year. Speedy Ortiz might still like playing basements, but at this point, it’s probably too popular to do that—at least safely.

When Speedy Ortiz played Dougout, the band drew enough people to fill the basement twice. Inside, people were pressed chest-to-back, Shobert says, and latecomers spilled into the yard and alleyway.

“There was no way we could let anyone else in,” Shobert says. “We were turning away our friends. We were turning away people who would come here all the time. And people who had already gotten in weren’t even able to get out. They couldn’t go out and have a cigarette, they couldn’t move. People were kicking on the door, screaming profanities at me and [stuff]. People were trying to bribe me with huge amounts of money.”

Sadie Dupuis, singer and guitarist for Speedy Ortiz, has seen a lot of packed shows in DIY spaces, but none that were “people-were-trying-to-bribe-their-way-in packed,” she says by phone.

The band kicked off a new tour last night at Black Cat after spending January playing shows in places like the Dougout. Before that winter outing, she says, the band was out on a higher-profile tour playing much bigger places. So for January, they booked as many basements, warehouses and other DIY spaces as they could, mainly through personal contacts. That’s how the Dougout show came about: The guys in Grass is Green, who were touring with Speedy, knew the Dougout and set up the show.

Dupuis acknowledges the band is getting bigger, but she says they do what they can to look past the hype and keep playing the kind of venues they prefer. “I think we try to strike a balance,” she says. “We were ready to play in spaces that we feel more comfortable in and feel like home for us.” She says the Dougout seemed like any other DIY show until a few days before, when she began to hear from folks nervous about the number of people who had RSVPed for it on Facebook. More than 200 people said they were going.

Marshall Pearson, Shobert’s housemate, was working the night of the Speedy Ortiz show. He got home after the band’s set, when the crush of people had dwindled to just a few. He says his housemates hated having to turn people away. The whole night “left a bad taste in their mouths,” Pearson says.

With the Iron Chic show already on the calendar, the roommates knew that same situation couldn’t play out again. It’s just too risky. The Dougout has been lucky so far, Pearson says; neighbors have been understanding, and most of its shows have been without incident. But the kind of chaos that characterized the Speedy Ortiz show jeopardizes “the longevity of our space,” Pearson says.

The Dougout made some changes for the Iron Chic appearance, which it projected would be just as big as the Speedy Ortiz show. Using the online Big Cartel system already established by D.C. punk-show promoter and Coke Bust member Chris Moore, the Dougout put a few dozen spots on sale. The show sold out within a few days.

* * *

By Iron Chic’s second song, the space is full, but not packed. The Dougout residents guess that around 20 people with reservations haven’t shown up, probably because of factors like the snowy weather and the night of the week. Compared to the Speedy Ortiz show, it’s calm. Attendees huddle around Jason Lubrano, the band’s stocky singer, and sing along, fingers pointed, pressing their hands against the basement’s low ceiling to keep upright.

Two days later, Shobert says that the turnout was exactly what he wanted. The band left happy; fans shouted along, then had enough space to visit the merch table and buy something. “Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll do the ticketing thing again,” he says. “It was a solution for what it was. It’s not something we want to rely on and do all the time.”

Every show is different, of course. Holly Hunt, an instrumental doom-metal band from Florida, plays the space March 23. No word on whether the house will have people reserve spots in advance. However it works out, the Dougout is now closer to understanding what it needs to do to preserve its DIY ethos and grow at the same time: steer toward better organization, for the good of all involved.

“I think it’s great, honestly,” Dupuis says of Dougout’s development. “I mean, isn’t that kind of the ideal?”