Guest Articles from December/January
Those of you who have been following my grassroots music journalism work for a few years are probably used to getting a giant list of reviews at the end of the year called Jarvix’s Big 50. To be honest, I was dealing with a lot of personal things at the end of last year, and while I worked towards 2019’s edition, I didn’t get it finished. And it’s still not finished. At the time of this writing, it’s about 40% complete. Also at the time of this writing, though, I am in coronavirus quarantine, so my hope is to still get it finished with the extra time, if only for posterity’s sake.
That said, I wrote three different year-end guest articles for three different platforms around that time to help fill the void. If you missed them, here they are:
This one has been a long time coming. As of last month, Make Oklahoma Weirder is officially on Patreon.
I’m a big fan of this platform and have personally supported a number of other projects over the years with it. I’ve seen what creators do right and what they do wrong, so I’m excited to throw my hat into the ring and engage music fans like you with what I’ve learned.
Again, it’s COVID season, so I know backing Make Oklahoma Weirder is probably not the highest on your list of priorities, and that’s ok. I’m not begging for money here. I do have specific goals for any funds we get to continue to grow and maintain MOW, but I’ll still be here one way or another should they not happen.
Here are some of the fun and unique reward tiers we’re offering. (If you’re on mobile and can’t zoom in, feel free to visit Patreon.com/weirderOK)
If you have no idea what any of this means, I’ve updated our Support page with the following explanation:
“Patreon is a crowdfunding platform that uses a monthly subscription model to allow patrons to support independent creators directly. Think of it like a Kickstarter, except that instead of funding one big project at one time, it serves to fund arguably smaller projects that are being created constantly, every month.
Like with Kickstarter, Patreon also uses reward tiers to thank patrons with single-use or monthly gifts for their support. Make Oklahoma Weirder has a handful of fun rewards available for you should you decide to support us, and you can cancel at any time.”
I also wrote a welcome article on the Patreon page, just one of many updates I’ve already published over there.
If you can’t already tell how excited I am about this, check this video I put together for the announcement we made last month:
We also have a Discord server now. It’s still pretty new, but I believe it has a lot of potential.
If you don’t know what Discord is or how it works, neither did I for a while. It was spawned by the gamer community, and full disclosure, I’m not a big gamer. I wrote this post on the MOW Patreon page when we launched it explaining what I know and have learned. There are also a couple of helpful links there, so it’s worth checking out if you’re in the dark on it.
In essence, our server is set up like an invite-only chat room or messageboard, but that really shortchanges its capabilities. I joined a watch party chat on a different server last weekend, for example. I’ve seen where some music-centric servers will have album listening sessions from time to time, and I’d like to try some stuff like that in the future (I’ve already started experimenting with exclusive streams for our tier 2+ Patrons). The MOW server is still developing, though, so I’m feeling a lot of it out as I go. We currently have text channels for music discussions as well as networking and q&a opportunities.
If you want an invite, you can message us for a link, which will expire 24 hours after we generate it for you. Another option is to join our Patreon. All support levels will hook you up once the first billing cycle kicks in.
Here’s another development that’s been in the pipeline for a while.
Last fall, a videographer and I filmed a few interviews at Boombox International using an interview template I devised back in 2015. I did a few articles with it, but it soon became clear that this was destined to be a video series.
Expect to see the full interviews coming out over the course of April, starting with, appropriately enough, OKC hip-hop duo WeRdoZe. I put out the trailer for the triple pilot this week, and you can watch it at the player below.
aka Jarvix, the Chief Executive Weirdo of Make Oklahoma Weirder. His out-of-the-box music coverage has been published by the Oklahoma Gazette, KOSU, and The Oklahoman among others. He also makes DIY music as a solo multi-instrumentalist live looper in his spare time.