But Flasher isn’t trying to sound retro. In fact, the group hasn’t settled on a particular vibe yet, says bassist and co-vocalist Danny Saperstein.

Released April 8, Flasher’s debut EP “is exciting because it does feel a little all over the place, a little scattered,” says Saperstein (of Bless and Trouble). “That’s probably a product of us still figuring out our sound.”

This chaos is only sonic. Turns out, Flasher is a kind of fated trio.

“We’ve been best friends for a really long time,” says guitarist Taylor Mulitz (of Priests and Young Trynas). “We all work together, [drummer] Emma [Baker] and I live together.” Plus, “Danny’s at the house a lot,” Baker says.

That closeness translated well to Flasher. “Luckily, all of us have a really easy time doing music with each other, which I think is really kind of rare,” says Mulitz. “There’s just something about doing it naturally and never feeling stressful trying to write a song.”

Why another band, though?

“The two bands that I play in do such different stuff that it fulfills completely different things for me — even though I’m playing the same instrument… it feels completely different,” says Baker, who also plays in Big Hush. “It’s really helped me progress. If I was missing one of them, I wouldn’t be the same drummer that I am.”

While the three have basically been Flasher since the first time Saperstein joined Mulitz and Baker onstage — in August 2015 — the band is an infant at best. That’s made clear by something that, in 2016, seems uncommon.

“Up until a week ago,” Mulitz says, “we had no Internet presence whatsoever.”

Flasher plays April 16 at Bathtub Republic and June 3 at Black Cat. The band’s debut EP is out now on Sister Polygon Records.

D.C. punk band Priests will headline a benefit show Friday at 411 New York Ave. NE, the location of the arts facility slated to become a boutique hotel. Also on the bill are experimental duo Janel and Anthony, synthesizer musician Adriana-Lucia Cotes and Ian Svenonius‘ solo project, Escape-ism.

The building on New York Avenue has operated under the name Union Arts since 2013, serving as a work and practice space for musicians and artists. Before that, it was used regularly for underground concerts and dance parties. But property taxes on the building became too high for the previous owners, and they sold the property last summer.

D.B. Lee Development, Inc. Construction and Brook Rose Development, LLC, purchased Union Arts in June 2015. They later announced plans to transform 411 New York Ave. NE into a high-end hotel with eight studios and other art spaces managed by the nonprofit CulturalDC. But up to 100 artists use the building on a rotating basis, according to supporters, and the new configuration is likely to push many of them out.

Supporters of Union Arts packed a zoning commission hearing Feb. 1. Many offered testimony about the scarcity of affordable arts space in D.C., which has rapidly gentrified in the last 15 years.

Janel Leppin of Janel and Anthony says the outpouring of support inspired her, and she decided to organize a show to bring attention to the situation.

“More than anything,” Leppin says, she wanted to “raise awareness for the need for spaces for artists in D.C.”

A flyer for Friday’s Union Arts benefit show

Leppin has performed at Union Arts numerous times. She says when choosing bands for the benefit concert, she picked acts who have been involved in the space in some way.

Priests fit that description. The band’s members have set up shows at Union Arts and two of them testified Feb. 1 on the importance of Union Arts to local music.

“It’s definitely a hub of music activity,” says Priests singer Katie Alice Greer in an interview. “It is a unique building right now in D.C. in certain ways. There aren’t a whole lot of other spaces left that are not private homes or businesses. … There’s not a lot of middle-ground spaces where people are actively making art and putting on shows for any band that they think is cool and interesting — in a way that’s not really driven by alcohol sales.”

But saving the building as it is now may not be feasible. According to Gail Harris, managing member of the LLC that sold Union Arts last year, the rent paid by artists did not cover the building’s property taxes. The new owners have asked the current tenants to vacate by Sept. 1. (Though at the hearing, D.B. Lee President Dennis Lee said that date may be flexible.)

CulturalDC says the new studios will accommodate “up to 20-plus artists” who can apply in an open call. Developers point out that musicians will also be considered for art spaces.

But current tenants are still challenging the redevelopment plans. Leppin says proceeds from Friday’s show will help the building’s artists with “whatever cost[s] they are faced with.” She later writes in an email that funds should go to help artists who are trying to find new studio space.

“We will raise the money to help Union Arts continue its work as an arts venue and basically a community center for the public — for as long as it can,” Leppin writes.

Desirée Venn Frederic, founder of vintage shop Nomad Yard Collectiv, which operates out of Union Arts, says that means lawyer’s fees. “In our current fight we acknowledge we need legal support and legal guidance,” she says.

The number of people who signed up to give public testimony Feb. 1 was so great that a second zoning commission hearing was scheduled for Feb. 23. Leppin says she hopes Friday’s show sparks enough interest to overwhelm that hearing, too.

The benefit concert for Union Arts takes place Feb. 19 at 411 New York Ave. NE. 8:30 p.m.

Top image: Protestors at a Feb. 1 zoning commission hearing on the planned redevelopment of Union Arts.

Sneaks

Pure Disgust

Priests

Priests

Screaming Females

Loud Boyz

All images by Cassandra Mullinix.

“I was just like ‘OK, this is a girl zine, this is gonna be great. I was being really sarcastic about it because I really like to focus on the inclusiveness of things,’” says Skeiky, who also works in food PR. “My ideal is always, ‘Why doesn’t every zine just have more female contributions?’”

But Skeiky eventually warmed up to the idea because Scharbach and Martinez had a strict rule: female-identified contributors only.

John Scharbach — better known as Crucial John, the vocalist of D.C. hardcore band Give — has spearheaded other zines before. He met Martinez, an artist and then-prospective American University student, at a Give show in her home state of Florida. He dug her art, so Scharbach advised Skeiky (an occasional Bandwidth contributor) to follow Martinez on Instagram.

Skeiky tapped “follow,” and out of this 21st century friendship, a 20th century zine emerged.

Skeiky took all the photos for Strawberry Dreams, mostly of live performances from punkish bands like Gouge Away, Downtown Boys and D.C.’s Sneaks and Priests. Martinez contributed a heap of drawings and a piece of writing, which opens the zine. Crucial John, the token man, handled layout and passed out the final product while touring Europe with Give.

“I think it’s important for everybody to consume media that makes them kind of uncomfortable.” —Farrah Skeiky

“I think it’s really good that [Crucial John] was part of this idea because he’s just being a really good male ally to women in the scene,” says Skeiky. “He’s setting a really good example — he’s not using his voice in the scene, which is a pretty strong one, to decide what should be in it. He’s using his voice [for] something everybody should be reading regardless of their gender.”

The zine’s founders stress that while Strawberry Dreams skews female-identified, they think everyone can — and should — read it. Skeiky points out that while cultural products created by men are considered open to all audiences, products made by women are often seen as specialized, or for women only.

“I think it’s important for everybody to consume media that makes them kind of uncomfortable,” Skeiky says, “because it means that you’re reading about something that you don’t know a lot about… or something that [makes you] realize you feel guilty [because] you haven’t given it much thought.”

Skeiky, Martinez and Crucial John plan to produce more issues of Strawberry Dreams this fall — with Issue No. 2 expected to arrive in the next month — and they’ll keep the finished product short and free of charge. After that, they may reevaluate both the zine’s size and cost. They say they’ve already been flooded with submission inquiries, so serious growth could arrive seriously soon.

The team’s distribution plan is a wonderful mix of old- and new-school: They distribute hard copies at shows, while folks with the digital PDF version are encouraged to email it far and wide.

The zine’s aesthetic is clearly influenced — like a lot of subculture right now — by the 1990s. But Skeiky and her partners (who have only been in the same room once, at a recent Ceremony show) want to go broader.

“There’s no denying that we’re not influenced by older punk zines, especially older riot grrrl kind of zines,” says Skeiky. “But we also recognize that there were a lot of things missing at the time from early riot grrrl zines, because that feminism was primarily for white women… and feminism can mean different things to different women.”

Hard copies of Strawberry Dreams are available at Joint Custody, Upshur Street Books, Smash Records and Meats & Foods. To get a copy in the mail, email your mailing address to strawberrydreamsfanzine@gmail.com. The zine’s second issue is forthcoming.

Strawberry Dreams Fanzine: Issue No. 1

WAMU is licensed to American University.

“Boom hazard hazard/Fallout comes my way,” Yandel sings, diving directly into meltdown imagery. She follows up with “Boom hazard hazard/I can’t get away.”

“I was thinking about it as a really great metaphor for a relationship falling apart,” says the 29-year-old Shaw resident, who also plays drums (but doesn’t sing) in Priests. “The chorus is obviously an allusion to nuclear meltdown, so thinking about Fukushima and Chernobyl and when the nuclear reactors melt down — how it’s just unexpected and things falling apart.”

The imagery might not be the most original for a rock tune, but the lyrical content of “Boom Hazard,” which is the fourth track on Gauche’s new cassette, Get Away With Gauche (on Priests’ Sister Polygon label), is unusually personal for the band. Its songs normally revolve around macro-level issues — society’s structure, identity politics — but this one doesn’t move much beyond the intimacies of a single relationship.

And the source of the hazard?

“In the world of that song, I was very big. Too big,” Yandel says. “I had a bigger impact than I wanted to. I wanted to get away from my impact.”

All this is not to say, however, that “Boom Hazard” is a standard breakup song. “I am not your mirror/I do not reflect you,” Yandel sings during one of the rapid-fire verses.

“One of the things the song does articulate well is that there is this feeling that I’ve been coming up against a lot that women tend to be these kinds of affirmative mirrors for other people,” says Yandel. “I’m actually a person with my own ideas, not just a thing for you to confirm your own identity.”

Of course, the kind of affirmation that Yandel is talking about isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, she points out that her closest relationship is currently with her bandmates, and particularly fellow vocalist Mary Jane Regalado.

“Mary sees me as the person I see myself to be and affirms that in me, and vice-versa,” Yandel says. “Ironically, the thing that annoys me that men do, I do to Mary and she does to me, but because we’re equals, it feels less exploitative.”

Within “Boom Hazard,” though, toxic self-affirmation is exactly what leads to a meltdown, because both parties crave the feeling of being valued as people.

“I think it has to do a lot with that sense, or becoming a tool for confirming something about the men who want to date me,” Yandel says. “I don’t want to be that. I want to be a being, too.”

DIY musicians work hard. A lot of time and effort goes into writing, recording, releasing records, planning tours and executing them. But when we talk about the economics of being a DIY artist — as I have in this series’ first two installments — how do we quantify musicians’ time and labor?

If we calculate the potential costs of a touring DIY musician, we can factor in hard expenses like gasoline, merchandise and food. And there are other expenses that some artists choose to take on, like hiring a publicist or booking agent.

But this other question of labor — the work artists put into making their music and booking tours, plus the time they spend on tour — is harder to talk about. It’s the least quantifiable expense, but it could have the greatest impact on DIY musicians’ day-to-day lives.

So why do musicians like myself rarely factor it into our economic picture? Is it because it brings up bigger, existential questions about how DIY musicians relate to our craft?

When we start to count the hours of unpaid labor musicians put into our work, and when we look at how intensely musicians structure our lives around accommodating those hours of unpaid labor, it raises the question: Doesn’t it seem strange that we should work so hard without compensation?

To shed light on these big questions, I talked to some of my musician friends about how they look at labor, the invisible expense.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Can’t tour with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

In a music economy where even successful bands aren’t paying their bills from tours and record sales, most DIY musicians are working day (and night) jobs when they’re not on tour. Time away from work means money lost, and it’s a serious consideration for bands when calculating how much time they spend on the road.

Sam Cook-Parrott of Philadelphia’s Radiator Hospital tells me about a tour he wrapped up in October during which the band earned what they considered a decent profit.

“But was it as much as if we worked a s****y minimum wage job?” Cook-Parrott wonders. “Basically. And then we lost our s****y minimum wage jobs. So it’s complicated.”

Job security is tricky for touring musicians. Some are lucky to find the rare job that lets them work from the road, but the more common tale is that of the musician hustling between different service-industry jobs.

“If you want a job that’s good to you, then you can’t go on tour.” — Gabrielle Smith of Frankie Cosmos

Gabrielle Smith of New York indie bands Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos, Bellows and Told Slant finds herself on the road constantly. She tells me about a job she worked at a coffee shop that would let her return whenever she needed work, but had a high turnover rate due to unbearable conditions.

“They would have kept taking me back over and over again, but they were very, very awful to their employees, which I think is the trade-off I’ve been finding. If you want a job that’s good to you, then you can’t go on tour,” Smith says.

“At this point I can’t get a regular job. I play in four bands,” says Chris Moore of D.C. punk bands Coke Bust, Sick Fix, DOC and The Rememberables. “What job is going to allow someone to leave for four to six months out of the year? No one.”

Between the instability of losing jobs to go on tour and the fact that jobs with flexible schedules tend to pay less, many musicians structure their entire lives around reducing their expenses.

Cook-Parrott’s money-management plan involves living a certain low-cost lifestyle.

“I live in a house with five other people. I don’t have a car. I walk or ride my bike or take public transit everywhere,” Cook-Parrott says. “Who knows if I’m gonna get another paycheck or if I’ll have a job or something? So it’s like, get used to living cheaply.”

Especially for musicians living in an expensive city like Washington, D.C., living cheaply might be taken to further extremes. Group house full of musicians? Think twice about heat in the winter. Don’t have much money for food? Get creative.

“For a while I was scamming manufacturers’ coupons,” Moore says. “I was calling up every single company I loved food from, and I’d be like, ‘Uh, I got sick,’ and they’d say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll give you a coupon.’”

But when the coupons start running out, plenty of questions remain about how artists can sustain themselves while pursuing music.

Hobbyist vs. Professional

When do you cross the line?

“The only financial burden I’ve run into with music is when things are going well,” says Jeff Rosenstock, the New York songwriter formerly of Bomb the Music Industry. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s a common sentiment.

“You’re like, ‘Oh, OK. Now I want to chase this thing that’s doing well,'” Rosenstock says. “But then you’re not home for long enough to actually maintain a job and be able to pay your bills.”

Knowing when your music’s success is enough to warrant the leap into financial instability is increasingly tough these days.

Much ink has been spilled over the Internet’s supposed democratization of art and culture. One thing that rings true is that musicians who might not have found an audience before can do that online now. But how do they know when the success they’ve found among niche online audiences is worth chasing full-time?

“The only financial burden I’ve run into with music is when things are going well.” —Jeff Rosenstock

“In a way, the newer machinery of how music is distributed has given us a way to quantify success,” says Daoud Tyler-Ameen of D.C. indie-pop project Art Sorority for Girls. “You can look at your retweets and check your premium Soundcloud stats and maybe there will be a spike and you’ll feel a little bit more validated that day.”

But numbers can paint an incomplete picture. Fans connect to music in intense ways, some of which can’t be measured by analytics.

“A deep connection to one person as opposed to a superficial connection to thousands of people can be more important and more meaningful, and even lead to greater success,” Tyler-Ameen says, “but there isn’t a way to quantify it.”

Musicians might find themselves receiving daily messages from fans. They might get glowing reviews on blogs or requests for performances from all over the world. But that doesn’t guarantee a sustainable career in music. So how do musicians calculate when the risk is worth taking?

And when does the term “hobby” not quite fit reality? When DIY musicians are suffering through day jobs they aren’t invested in to make ends meet, while they put as much — if not more — work into their craft for which there is palpable demand, it’s hard to call it a hobby.

“I work in a restaurant. That’s where I spend most of my time,” said Priests vocalist Katie Alice Greer, onstage with author Astra Taylor at the Future of Music Policy Summit last fall. “I’m not sitting in the restaurant wondering how I’m going to become a famous star. I’m wondering, ‘How am I going to live a life where I can actually get paid for the work that I want to create and not waste away in this industry that I don’t care about, serving food?’”

Cultural Value of Music

Do we think musicians should be paid?

The $5 punk show is the five cent Coca-Cola of the 21st century. That low door fee was set by consensus in the 1980s as a way to keep punk and indie concerts affordable and accessible. Thirty years later, it’s still the standard fee at house shows across the country. Prices for just about everything else — food, rent, gas — have soared since then. Yet musicians are getting compensated at the same rate they were 30 years ago.

There are plenty of reasons to keep DIY shows cheap. Technology has enabled a saturation of the music scene that wasn’t possible in the 1980s. Showgoers who are often low-income themselves are paying more for living expenses with less disposable income. But the $5 show model doesn’t account for touring bands’ costs.

“I wish we lived in a world where $5 was enough to sustain a touring band,” says Erica Freas of Olympia, Washington, punk band RVIVR. “But instead of doing something to change that, we just act like it’s already changed.”

It’s a nice idea that bands shouldn’t have to worry about money. Sometimes DIY communities act as though things already are that way and ignore unavoidable economic realities. Freas calls it “a dystopic discordance with reality.”

Beyond DIY politics, though, there just seems to be a universal expectation now that music should be as cheap as possible, if not free. When even the Platinum-selling anomaly Taylor Swift can’t sell tickets to her concerts at market value because fans expect a lower price from musicians, what does that say?

“If your concept of your musician is Led Zeppelin in a Jacuzzi full of money, it’s easier to excuse the whole music economy from having to figure out a way to compensate people sustainably.” —Daoud Tyler-Ameen of Art Sorority For Girls

Some DIY musicians tell me creative labor should be valued just as highly as “regular” work. “Making money off music would allow me to play more music, and that’s what I care about,” Freas says. Greer agrees. “I absolutely think musicians should be able to live off their work,” she writes.

But some musicians — like many consumers — hesitate to assign monetary value to musical labor.

“I put more energy into [booking shows and tours] than I do my actual job,” Amanda Bartley of Columbus, Ohio, band All Dogs says. “But I don’t really view it as labor. It’s just something I enjoy doing.”

Why is it so easy to devalue or dismiss this particular type of labor? The same expectation doesn’t seem to apply to most other work. Is it because of a cultural expectation that you shouldn’t enjoy the work that you do?

Maybe. Tyler-Ameen also thinks it could have something to do with an antiquated cultural understanding of who musicians are.

“If your concept of your musician is Led Zeppelin in a Jacuzzi full of money,” Tyler-Ameen says, “it’s a little easier to excuse yourself or excuse the whole music economy from having to figure out a way to compensate people sustainably.”

There’s also a sense that artists are more authentic if their work is untainted by an expectation of compensation.

“We don’t analyze or think critically about the arts as an industry in the United States,” Greer writes in an email. “Artists themselves expect to be poor to authenticate their work.”

Rosenstock maintains that making music can — and perhaps should — be its own reward. But he says there are other factors that artists have to be realistic about.

“Obviously, the reason you’re doing it is because you’re reaching people, and that’s awesome,” Rosenstock says. “But reaching people doesn’t pay for your rent or get you enough gas to go to the next city.”

New Models For Getting By

Do sponsorships and crowdfunding make sense for DIY musicians?

As the music economy shifts, much has been made of new models that could help musicians survive on their music, but little of it seems to have resonated among the touring DIY musicians I’ve known over the last decade.

One of those proposed models: corporate sponsorships for indie bands.

“The only way we can make a living off our creative work, it seems, is to do the bidding of a larger corporate business,” Greer writes. “That, for me, is typically an inconsistent reality with the themes of my work. Musicians shouldn’t have to degrade themselves to taking money from sources that make them feel uncomfortable in order for this to happen.”

Other new-school models like crowdfunding have gained some traction, but ultimately don’t come across as a sustainable solution.

“If you’re the kind of person who can make a Kickstarter video where you look totally natural and not uncomfortable, you’re more likely to find something sustainable [now],” Tyler-Ameen says. “A lot of people feel like they don’t know necessarily how to compete in that world and still feel and sound like themselves.”

“Musicians shouldn’t have to degrade themselves to taking money from sources that make them feel uncomfortable.” –Katie Alice Greer of Priests

Freas says she didn’t find the amount of work involved in crowdfunding to be worth the trouble after her band RVIVR funded a relatively cheap trip to Europe on Kickstarter in 2011.

“The amount of [blowback] we got from the DIY community in balance with how much work it was to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards made us wish we just bought the tickets on a credit card and saved ourselves the hassle and the attention,” Freas says. “It’s one skill to write music, and it’s another skill to manage a hustle that can even come close to being sustainable while holding on to your values.”

Musicians who don’t thrive on those new earning models can face a particular kind of crisis.

“There’s a kind of emotional dysphoria that a lot of creators feel in this economy because they are told over and over again that all they have to do is be really good,” Tyler-Ameen says. “It’s a really lonely, miserable place to be to be told that all you have to do is be good, and then you do your best to be good and you can’t make a dent in anything. You just sort of assume you must not be any good.”

For most bands, the only viable pathway toward making a career out of music is to simply never stop touring. If tour sustains musicians — and keeping a job in the interim is too difficult — just stay on the road. But that lifestyle can be exhausting, and it certainly isn’t for everyone.

“I don’t think I would want to be traveling all the time for much more than a year or so,” Bartley says.

“Personally,” Freas echoes, “I don’t think being on the road all the time is good for my mental health.”

Our Identity

Are we musicians first?

When I talk to musicians about the value of their creative labor, the idea that loving one’s work invalidates it as “work” comes up again and again. What I hear across the board from musicians is that music is what they love, and they’ll find a way to do it, whether or not it’s validated by outside sources.

But even musicians who believe their work is valuable — and worthy of fair compensation — are not necessarily ready to call themselves professional musicians.

“Up till this day, if somebody asks me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a graphic designer. I still don’t tell people I’m a musician,” Rosenstock says, even after he points out he earns more from music. “Playing music is a thing I have to do. A thing I love doing.”

Even musicians who believe their work is valuable — and worthy of fair compensation — are not necessarily ready to call themselves professional musicians.

Plenty of musicians aspire to make music the center of their lives, but that doesn’t mean they call it their job.

“Maybe it’s sad to say, but I never really had any professional aspirations outside of playing music,” says Moore. “I never really had an aspiration to play music professionally, either.”

Is it possible that, on a subconscious level, music consumers know that the Chris Moores of the world will keep pumping out blast beats whether or not they’re getting paid for it? And could that contribute to the idea that musicians’ labor isn’t worth paying for — among consumers and musicians alike?

“It’s a weird thing, I think, for us as humans to take such a natural, pure impulse as opening up your mouth and singing and try and make it into money,” Cook-Parrott says.

When there’s a pairing of money and music, cognitive dissonance comes into play for both musicians and fans.

For now, though, Cook-Parrott is trying not to worry about it.

“Most people have s****y jobs for their entire life and then they die. If that’s my alternative to playing music, then I’m going to f*****g play music and go to weird towns and barely make any money and have fun doing it and then leave a good-looking corpse,” Cook-Parrott says. “That’s the plan.”

Photo by Flickr user Patrick Gruban used under a Creative Commons license.

“Obviously, at first, music and libraries seems like a head-scratcher because libraries are quiet,” says local promoter, artist manager and record-label owner Jim Thomson. But for the past six months, Thomson has been helping change expectations about what goes on inside D.C.’s public libraries.

On behalf of scrappy theater nonprofit Capital Fringe, Thomson has been programming “Fringe Music in the Library,” one of two series bringing live music to the D.C. Public Library system. The other series is strictly punk rock, presented by the library’s D.C. Punk Archive. DCPL has been hosting those noisy gigs since October 2014 to help promote its growing collection of D.C. punk ephemera. The latest show takes place downtown tonight — with D.C. bands Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers — then Friday it’s back to Thomson, who’s bringing in D.C.’s CooLots under the Capital Fringe banner.

For the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library — D.C.’s central library downtown — these shows help it build a reputation as a cultural center. It’s a rebranding for a facility that’s been dogged by systemwide budget cuts and criticism of its Brutalist architecture. (The District is planning to overhaul MLK Library in two years and add an auditorium.) DCPL has also had to confront complaints from residents who openly — many would say crudely — gripe about homeless residents who utilize the library’s amenities. Then there’s the bigger picture: Libraries all over the world are facing questions about their role in the 21st century. Could it be prudent to focus on libraries not just as information warehouses, but cultural beacons?

“One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture.” —Linnea Hegarty, executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation

Linnea Hegarty, the executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation, seems to think so. She says the foundation covers the costs of both D.C. Public Library concert series — including fees to the bands — and says they’re now funded through 2016. “One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture,” Hegarty writes via email.

Capital Fringe is best known for its annual performing-arts event, the Fringe Festival. But last year, under Julianne Brienza’s leadership, the organization hired Thomson to take over music-booking at the festival, then asked him to handle the eclectic library shows she had set into motion. Those events overlapped with the D.C. Punk Archive’s basement shows, which Martin Luther King Jr. Library music librarian Maggie Gilmore says were “designed to increase attention to and support of the D.C. Punk Archive,” its ongoing effort to document the District’s three-chord rock scene.

Michele Casto, one of the librarians who helped get the D.C. Punk Archive off the ground, says DCPL wants to show that the punk archive isn’t just about long-gone history.

“Having shows that feature current local bands helps reiterate the point that the archive is 1976 to the present, that we’re documenting local music that’s happening now not just local music of the past,” Casto writes in an email.

The punk gigs also aim to support the next generation of D.C. musicians. “For every show, we’ve tried to include a band that’s either just getting started, or that consists of kids — i.e. bands that might have a hard time getting a gig in a club,” Casto writes. “This gives them a place to get experience performing.”

The punk shows take place every other month and have included raucous performances from Joy Buttons, Hemlines, Flamers and Priests. Under Thomson, the Fringe gigs have dabbled in punk, too — roping in punk provocateur Ian Svenonius multiple times — but they’ve prized diversity, bringing in the rarely seen soul singer George Smallwood, Afropop vocalist Anna Mwalagho, jazz/poetry act Heroes Are Gang Leaders and the Ethiopian Jazz Quartet with Feedel Band‘s Araya Woldemichael.

“I hope that the citizens will come in and get inspired by seeing an Ethiopian jazz quintet and go, ‘Wow,'” Thomson says.

Some younger residents, it seems, have already found that inspiration. When guitarist Anthony Pirog performed at the downtown library with his surf band, The El Reys, librarians projected the film Endless Summer while kids bopped around. They were “dancing and bouncing around wildly, full of excitement for the music,” Gilmore emails. “That put a smile on everyone’s face.”

Now, if only more people would come to the shows.

Woldemichael guesses that at his recent library gig, “50 percent of them were curious folks and the rest were my friends, family members and fans.” Thomson acknowledges that a recent performance at the Benning Road library only brought a handful of people. “The branch libraries are a little more challenging to get attendance,” he says. “Mainly location, location, location. It’s hard to get interest in it, or to publicize it.”

The promoter hopes that momentum will build over time. “I know from when you are working with regular venues, you don’t get a slam dunk in the beginning, always,” he says. “You have to plant a seed and let it have a chance to germinate. We are really in a very early stage.”

Meanwhile, artists seem appreciative of the series’ benevolent mission — even if the room doesn’t fill up.

“Heroes Are Gang Leaders really felt that this performance [at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library] was a special opportunity to reach out to and interact with longtime D.C. residents, amidst the city’s advanced stages of gentrification, displacement and widespread oppression of many Washingtonians,” band member Luke Stewart writes in an email.

Plus, it gives residents a chance to absorb culture — for free — that they wouldn’t normally come across, Thomson says. In a way, that’s the role of a library in the first place.

“For me, the side benefit is to go into libraries that are in parts of the city that are not part of my everyday life,” the promoter says. “It helps you interact with the city. I like to see these different things that makes the city as an organism come to life.”

Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers play the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 6 p.m. June 11. The CooLots play at noon on June 12. For a complete schedule of Capital Fringe concerts at D.C.’s libraries, consult this calendar. The Punk Archive basement shows are usually publicized on the D.C. Public Library’s Facebook page.

Top photo courtesy of Jim Thomson

“It seems like a useless word to me because if you’re doing a band, aren’t you already doing it yourself?” says D.C. punk vocalist Katie Alice Greer, 26. “It’s a word that has totally lost its meaning, except that it’s a marketing term. It’s marketable to people.”

But “DIY” fits Sister Polygon, the label that Greer and her bandmates in Priests have been running since 2012.

“We just wanted full agency over how our music was coming out,” Greer says.

With Sister Polygon, Priests certainly has that — down to the smallest detail. Greer usually handles the imprint’s publicity; bassist Taylor Mulitz deals with design. Drummer Daniele Daniele (a pseudonym) oversees accounting, which sometimes includes tempering her bandmates’ expensive ideas.

“When the rest of us are like, ‘This is a great idea to print on sparkly, glow-in-the-dark paper,’ Daniele will be like, ‘Beautiful. That’s not possible,’” Greer says.

Priests guitarist G.L. Jaguar (also a pseudonym) handles the process of packaging each release and slipping them in the mail. If buyers find Cyndi Lauper trading cards in their packages, that’s because he found them recently and thought people would really enjoy them. (He also came up with the label’s name. It’s a reference to a song by Sicilian band Silver Bullets.)

This month, Sister Polygon celebrated a milestone of sorts: It put out its 10th release, Pinkwash’s Cancer Money 7-inch. The heavy Philadelphia band is friends with Priests. So is Cigarette, the slocore ensemble from D.C. that has a 7-inch coming out on the label, possibly this year.

But for Greer and Jaguar, running the label isn’t just about supporting their pals — it’s also about finding music that speaks to them, made by people who are just as passionate.

“When we see music and people who are putting in their all, it’s not just bleeding out your guts with your emotions — that’s important, too — but people who are really trying to express something where there is not space or dialogue for already. That is stuff we want to get behind and try to support,” Greer says.

It’s important to Sister Polygon that it picks artists who have some praxis behind their politics. One of the label’s bands, Downtown Boys, includes members involved in advocacy work.

“We’re a very political band and label, to a certain extent,” Greer says.

Yet Sister Polygon seems fueled not just by ideology, but by its own enthusiasm. Running the label is a labor of love that Priests seems more than willing to do.

“Sister Polygon: very stoked,” Jaguar says, improvising a tagline for the label.

Greer agrees. “Probably annoyingly so,” she says, laughing.

Stream Sister Polygon’s label sampler via Soundcloud:

“DIY.” It’s a term you can stick in front of any music genre to indicate a way of doing things. It doesn’t describe a particular sound. It doesn’t just mean “punk.” Really, it’s just the idea that we musicians don’t need the backing of the music industry to make music. We can and should seize the means of production. We should do it ourselves.

In 2015, doing it ourselves is easier than it’s ever been, thanks to technology that eliminates barriers between musicians and listeners. But today’s crowded creative environment has also prompted artists to begin rethinking the way they define and practice DIY.

What are the boundaries of DIY? Are you doing it yourself if you’ve hired someone to do publicity for your band’s tour? What if someone booked the tour for you? Is playing a traditional music venue DIY, or do you strictly play houses and nonprofit show spaces? At what point does the stability of your project depend on outside involvement?

When considering the costs of DIY touring, bands often bump into and wander back and forth across these ill-defined boundaries. They ask themselves questions like, “What effect does it have economically and experientially to hire a booking agent?” and “To what extent should courting media coverage factor into our tour budget?”

I don’t have answers to these questions. But I chatted with several musicians who have been mulling them over while they attempt to produce and share their music in a sustainable way. Here’s what we talked about.

Publicity

The ups and downs of playing the promo game

Artists have an incentive to get out the word about their shows: They want people to see them play. But first, people have to know about the show.

Good ol’ word-of-mouth can go a long way, but in a world where Facebook and Google algorithms dictate who sees what about which bands, having the endorsement of reputable music blogs seems to play an increasingly large role in artists’ promotion strategies.

The problem is DIY publicity is next to impossible. Media outlets are bombarded by tons of press releases and inquiries every day. Necessarily, some of them are more likely to check out music sent by entities they already know or trust, and often, those entities are PR companies.

That means that even DIY labels and artists will sometimes a hire PR firm to promote a record or tour. Daoud Tyler-Ameen of D.C. indie-pop project Art Sorority for Girls says pro publicists try to strike a balance between inundating and intriguing media stakeholders with pitches for their clients’ music.

“They will spend a year building it up in such a way that you keep getting hammered with the name,” Tyler-Ameen says. The goal is that “the media coverage rolling up to a release is spaced apart far enough and novel enough each time that you don’t get sick of it.”

Confusingly, though, sometimes publicity just happens on its own.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone.’ But that doesn’t translate to money. It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.” — Sam Cook-Parrott of Radiator Hospital

“We played mostly local shows for the first year of us being a band. Then someone from Pitchfork and someone from Stereogum each wrote about our band, and suddenly it was like, ‘Whoa, a lot of people know about us!'” says Amanda Bartley, who plays in Columbus, Ohio, band All Dogs. “We had a lot of people contact us about doing PR stuff for us and we haven’t pursued any of that, which is kind of a testament to the Internet doing that for us.”

But the fickle Internet is nothing to bet on. Waiting for accidental exposure can be like playing the lottery. Jeff Rosenstock, formerly of Bomb the Music Industry, has been touring in bands for 15 years. Despite various other measures of success, he rarely used to catch any attention from music blogs.

Rosenstock told me last fall, “I don’t know what blog buzz is like. I bet it’s awesome.”

That changed this year, when Rosenstock put out a record on a label with an in-house publicist. Quickly he found himself written about on Consequence of Sound, Noisey, Stereogum, A.V. Club and Spin.com, just to name a few.

But getting attention in the music media can lead to an inflated outside perception of success, says Sam Cook-Parrott of Philadelphia’s Radiator Hospital.

“People think, ‘Oh, they’re doing fine. They got written about in Rolling Stone. Don’t f*****g worry about it.’ Does success mean getting written about in a cool blog or in Rolling Stone? Because what does that mean? That doesn’t translate to money,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s a cool thing to show your parents, but it’s not a real, actual thing.”

Plus, there’s a feeling among some bands that the promo cycle can lend an empty glaze of marketing to the art of writing and producing music.

“I think that bands are way more short-sighted than they used to be,” Cook-Parrott says. “It’s like with blockbuster movies and it’s all about the opening weekend. That’s not how making a record should be.”

Booking Agents

When they’re cool (and when they’re weird)

There was a time when hiring a booking agent was considered the definitive line between whether a band could be called DIY or not. But putting together a tour can be draining for bands, particularly in the DIY world, where booking networks are informal and constantly changing. The time and energy that goes into organizing a tour can feel like a full-time job, which is especially tough for musicians who already have one.

When are house shows better than club gigs? (Photo: Michael Andrade)

Tyler-Ameen, who works full time, says he felt exhausted by booking two of his own tours in 2014.

“They kicked my ass,” Tyler-Ameen says. “It really did feel each time pretty consuming, where I would get out of work and go and send emails until I was tired. And that was the case for weeks. Which doesn’t seem sustainable.”

Katie Alice Greer, who sings in D.C. punk band Priests, writes in an email that her band’s decision to work with a booking agent had a lot to do with time management — particularly making time to earn money.

“I had a very low-cost living situation and a job with flexible hours [in 2013],” Greer says. That meant she and Priests’ drummer were able to book most of their tours themselves. But when they both had to ramp up their work schedules, she says, they hired a booking agent.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. But sometimes on tour I don’t want to have a meet-and-greet every single day.” — Gabrielle Smith of Frankie Cosmos

“It certainly helps to have an extra head (with a lot of experience) involved in the process of mapping out a tour that will make sense,” Greer writes.

But some DIY bands choose a combined strategy: They book some of their own shows, and leave others to a professional. That’s the method familiar to Gabrielle Smith, who plays with indie bands Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos, Bellows and Told Slant. Two of her bands book their own tours and two work with booking agents. When those worlds meet, she says things get a little strange.

“It totally is weird when we play a house show and the booking agent asks for a W-2 and a headcount,” Smith says.

When bands work with professional bookers, they’re more likely to play commercial spaces like bars and clubs, and that transition can be a little jarring. For one thing, there’s an experiential difference between the two kinds of shows.

“House shows are always a lot more fun while you’re playing. The entire interaction beforehand can be really amazing and really warm and welcoming, but also can be really uncomfortable,” Smith says. “Sometimes on tour I don’t necessarily want to have a meet-and-greet every single day. On that level, having the booking agent and playing at a place that’s not a house every single day can be more comforting.”

Then there’s the question of how money is handled.

“The houses don’t take money most of the times, and a bar will. Or they’ll say, ‘We’re gonna give you $100′ and maybe they make more, but you’ve agreed to that amount,” Cook-Parrott says. “A house show is pretty clean. They tell you, ‘This is the money we made’ and sometimes it’s way more than you’d ever make if you just played some $100 guarantee show at a bar.”

When playing house shows is working optimally, it can feel magical, like an alternate economy worth putting faith in. But it’s also precarious.

Smith describes a common experience of playing a house show, where no effort is taken to collect money at the door: “They give you $10 or $15, and they’re like, ‘Hope this is enough. Thanks for playing. Bye!'”

If no explicit financial arrangement has been made, there’s not much you can do but fill your gas tank up one eighth of the way and hope the next show pays better.

Talking About Money

Mum’s the word

Sometimes income itself isn’t the only economic obstacle to a DIY tour. Conversations about money — or the lack of them — can be a huge factor in a tour’s economic success.

Bands can feel uncomfortable talking about money with show promoters, especially when they’re relying on an informal network of people exchanging favors. Take Bartley, who says she didn’t talk to anyone about money before booking her most recent tour.

“I just kind of assumed that everyone I talked to was kind of on the same page,” Bartley says.

But that assumption can leave musicians vulnerable.

“When it is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary,” says Greer. “I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.”

Rosenstock says he has a way of conducting conversations about money on the road.

“When we would play house shows, I’d talk to the people at the house beforehand and be like, ‘Hey, I don’t wanna be a d**k, but I think somebody should be at the door making sure everybody gives six bucks or five bucks or whatever it is,” Rosenstock says.

“When [talking about money] is uncomfortable, I remind myself that it is absolutely necessary. I will not be in a position where I am not paid fairly because money was not explicitly discussed.” — Katie Alice Greer of Priests

He thinks money at shows should be going toward bands, not beer for the party. “I’d rather that money be able to sustain us to go on tour again next year than for that money to fuel this ‘You need alcohol to party so put another bunch of dollars in this huge company’ thing. Don’t you think it would be nicer if we got that money tonight instead of Anheuser-Busch?”

Rosenstock says that approach has worked for him. “I would never, ever ever get a response that was like, ‘F**k you.’ It’d always be like ‘Yeah, you’re right. Totally.'”

Still, hiring someone else to handle the money side can be a sufficiently attractive reason for some musicians to work with a booking agent.

“We’re all very polite people, so we’re not that good at getting paid maybe what we know certain places have budgets that they can afford to pay us, and we’ve definitely been shorted in a lot of ways,” Smith says of her bands. “With the booking agent it’s always pre-arranged. There’s a guarantee or a very specific percentage that we’d get of the door … and if they tried to give us less, we had the backing of someone else.”

Guarantees Vs. Door Deals

Punkonomics!

When a venue commits to paying a band a certain amount of money no matter how many (or few) people come to see a show, that’s called a guarantee. They can be pragmatic. But they’re also deeply stigmatized in the punk and indie-rock scenes.

In a network of show promoters where anti-capitalist (or at least anti-commercial) ethics have been central to their community identity, it can come across as arrogant to demand a fixed amount of money to play a show, especially if that means a promoter will be paying out of pocket at the end of the night.

On the other hand, promoters don’t always understand the costs of tour — or worse yet, they do understand and still pay too little. A guarantee can offer protection against that.

“The guarantee is set in place so [bands] are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours. It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.” — Chris Moore of Coke Bust

But Rosenstock says that politics aside, some bands are better off doing a door deal.

“Say you’re asking someone who runs a house,” he says. “You’re like, ‘Hey, we have a $250 guarantee,’ and you bring, like, 10 people to the show. That promoter’s going to be like, ‘OK, I’ll pay this band 250 bucks, but I’m never gonna book them again because this was a nightmare.'”

Guarantees are typical when bands work with a booking agent. Professional bookers tend to prefer it that way so they can assure their own percentage and a cut for the band. But if the booker’s only criteria is a venue that will agree to a guarantee, other important factors like finding the right place for a band’s audience can fall by the wayside.

“I played in a band for a little while and we did a big tour and it was booked by this guy. We played shows every night, and we played $100 guarantee shows that no one came to. If we would have booked the show ourselves, a bunch of people would have come,” Cook-Parrott says.

So on Radiator Hospital’s last tour, the band did things differently.

“We did it all ourselves and the shows were consistently f*****g awesome. Because we were communicating with our friends and with people who understand our music,” Cook-Parrott says. “Not just the dude at the bar down the street who needs to fill entertainment every night.”

Chris Moore, who plays in D.C. hardcore bands Coke Bust, Sick Fix and DOC, says none of his bands have a guarantee. But he doesn’t fault anyone for having one because guarantees serve a purpose.

“The guarantee is set in place so they are able to sustain a tour and are able to do future tours,” Moore says. “It’s taboo in the punk scene to even consider something like that.”

* * *

Regardless of where bands stand on booking agents, publicists, bar gigs or guarantees, sustainability is the key issue in these conversations. Few people in the DIY music community expect to strike it rich, but when pursuing music is keeping musicians broke, considering compensation for their labor comes into focus.

To what extent should music be the labor of love it’s widely understood to be? In the face of a music economy that’s being reshaped on every level, to what degree can musicians expect to be paid to keep making music? And what happens when the answers to those questions mean the difference between having a band and not having one?

We’re still talking about it.

Stay tuned for Combs’ next installment in a series of essays about the DIY music economy. Read Part 1, “These Are The Real Costs Of Going On A DIY Tour.”

Photos, from top: Young Trynas at the Dougout, July 2014; modified iPad email inbox used under a Creative Commons license; Swimsuit Addition at the Rocketship, July 2014; modified donation jar used under a Creative Commons license; donation bowl used under a Creative Commons license.

Some of this year’s most unforgettable local songs didn’t come from comfortable experiences. They sounded fed up, and particularly urgent in a year marked by growing inequity at home and multiple slayings by police in places that didn’t feel far away.

In one of the year’s rawest rock songs, Thaylobleu cranked up its guitars to tell a personal story of police harassment. Chain and the Gang and Jack On Fire assailed gentrification with wit and hyperbole. Punk band Priests declared everything right wing. Two remarkable hip-hop works channeled frustration and fatalism among young black Americans: Diamond District’s Oddisee cried, “What’s a black supposed to do — sell some crack and entertain?”, while Virginia MC GoldLink rapped about all the glorious things he imagines happening to him — when he dies.

Not that peace and love felt impossible in 2014: In a touching song released two years after his death, Chuck Brown sang of a “beautiful life” enriched by the warmth of community. Promising newcomer Kali Uchis made us kick back with a soulful number steeped in giddy infatuation. Experimentation thrived in D.C. music: Young artists built on the region’s strong punk pedigree and expanded its boundaries. Mary Timony’s band Ex Hex embraced a classic sound and made one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll records. Local bands with shorter but distinctive resumes — like Laughing Man, Two Inch Astronaut and Deleted Scenes — sounded better and more creative than ever before. A Sound of Thunder and Gloom reminded us that the D.C. area is still a reliable producer of top-notch metal.

As expected, Bandwidth contributors faced hard choices while making this list of the year’s best local songs, and not only because it’s our first one. Up until deadline, we were still hearing new D.C. songs we wanted to include. But in a place where mounting wealth has created a challenging environment for art, that’s not a problem, really. It’s a testament to a music scene that perseveres despite long odds. —Ally Schweitzer

Warning: Many of these songs contain explicit lyrics.