The roots community in the Boston area is a fairly young pool of artists and perhaps isn’t as privy to what the community looked like 10 years ago…hell, even 5 years ago. Two entities truly defined my own personal dive into the local music community when I returned to the city after college. One was the Band in Boston podcast, which at the time was a pretty forward thinking idea that today (a time where anyone can have a podcast and there are 100s of them for different topics) may not be fully appreciated. The other was the emergence of a “blog”…blog, I still hate the word but I digress…ok, an online publication that was in existence for one reason and one reason only: to serve as an ongoing love letter to the Boston music community and the bands that creators Richard Bouchard and Ashley Willard adored.

Boston Band Crush was my ‘go to’ during those early hours at the office to relive shows I had gone to the night or weekend before. Check out new artists I didn’t yet hear about or shows that were coming up I needed to be at. The nostalgia I feel for late Allston nights at Harper’s Ferry (now Brighton Music Hall) or catching shows at any of the The Middle East’s rooms still gives me shivers to this day when I reflect on it. It was my initial introduction to what a ‘music community’ truly is I can honestly say that had Boston Band Crush never existed I am fairly certain this online publication likely would not have either.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Boosh and Ashley for showing me (indirectly) that even I could make a website and just talk about the bands that I love and people (literally, TENS of people!) would actually read it. And I am not sure if I am just older now and back then I had a totally different mindset about going out and drinking far too many PBRs and seeing a rock show, where as now give me a double IPA, maybe two, and get me home before midnight, but the atmosphere around BBC and the entirety of music around town had this electricity that I have since lost the grip on. It was just a completely different aesthetic back then and it was really f*cking special…maybe it was all the PBRs.

Back in those days The Sinclair didn’t even exist yet, but an incredible evening known as One Night Band did. It was an evening I desperately wanted to be a part of myself but only was able to be an audience member for year after year. Buds from bands ranging from The Rationales to John Colvert to Michael Epstein to Old Jack and other bands I was hearing for the first time, formed bands in a day, wrote 3 songs, then performed them that night. If you know anything about my personal music history, you know that a “band in a night” deal is straight up my alley. Its exciting, its fun, it can be goofy at times, but there is a sense of community pride and coming together of all genres in this night that is truly something special. Some real magic happens in those evenings.

More “official” information below, but if you are around on January 6th and weren’t around from 2009-2012 playing music in Boston and Camberville, I cannot stress enough that you need to get to this show. If you were and have been, well, you already have your ticket (or will be on stage).

Tickets are available here, and there are some extras you can buy through PledgeMusic

The evening will benefit ZUMIX, the East Boston non-profit that works to empower youth who use music to make strong positive change in their lives, their communities, and the world. Richard Bouchard has been an active supporter of ZUMIX.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/518418035176859/