RPM listening parties scheduled across the nation 

After of an exhausting but fruitful month of writing and recording original music, the 850-plus RPM participants who successfully completed albums in the month of February are entitled to a spirited celebration. With the help of some ambitious volunteers, that celebration will spread across North America.

At least eight cities in the United States will host RPM listening parties on Friday, March 30, along with one city in Canada. The central party will take place at six venues in RPM’s home base of Portsmouth, featuring music from Seacoast area musicians. But participants elsewhere have organized concurrent celebrations in Denver, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Cleveland, the Twin Cities, Austin and Courtenay, British Columbia. Hatchling Studios developed an online tool allowing party hosts to program their own setlists, focusing on music from local bands in each city.

Also, Jeff Chamberlain will host a listening party online in the virtual world of Second Life. A link accessible on the RPM Challenge Web site connects  visitors to an online party in a virtual location, enabling curious listeners from around the globe to attend.  

A successful citywide party spread between five Portsmouth venues followed the inaugural 2006 RPM Challenge. Guests heard a single track from each of the 165 CDs received from participants throughout New Hampshire. But this year the challenge went global. More than 2,400 bands signed up at www.rpmchallenge.com, and more than one third of them ultimately mailed or delivered finished CDs to The Wire office in Vaughan Mall.

Eager to involve participants from far and wide, RPM organizers called upon participants to orchestrate their own listening parties across the globe, and several gamely responded.

Shortly after completing a 10-song alternative album called “Oh Empty,” Indi, a singer/songwriter based in Denver, Colo., noticed the request on the RPM Web site. She expressed her potential interest, and RPM organizers pounced at the opportunity.

“That’s the sign of a good organizer, though,” Indi joked in a recent e-mail. “If anyone shows the slightest bit of interest, put them to work!”

Specific plans for Indi’s party were still up in the air early this week, but 19 people had registered to attend by mid-March. Indi expected others to sign up before the end of the month. Almost all the people who registered in advance offered to help put the event together.

Ryan Sutter of Trumpet Marine took the initiative in the Twin Cities, organizing a shindig at the Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar in St. Paul, right across the Mississippi River from Minneapolis.

February is a chilly month in Sutter’s neck of the woods, but the challenge helped him fend off the Minnesota blues. He sang and played guitar, bass, drums and xylophone on his RPM album, “Louder, Longer, Lobster,” and recorded most of the 10 tracks alone in his basement.

When the hard work of recording was done, it seemed natural to help organize a listening party. “Somebody had to, nobody else was volunteering. That’s about it,” Sutter stated in an e-mail. “We’re going to listen to the music, trade discs, hang out, but beyond that I have no idea yet.”

Jessica Emelia posted messages on the RPM Web site to gauge interest in a possible Chicago party after noticing a large volume of participants in her area. Plans for a party at Deliliah’s on North Lincoln Avenue were all but finalized by the middle of the month, and more than 40 people promptly registered to attend.

Emelia is the sole member of “My Imaginary Life,” which completed a self-titled RPM album consisting of “a mix of beats, rock and pop, electro, a little banjo here and there, a little bit of Mexico and Johnny Cash, and a touch of sadness,” she explained in an e-mail.

Another participating band, Crispus Attacks, helped Emelia book the venue and organize the party. Once a suitable location had been established, pinning down the rest of the details was easy. The party will last from 6 p.m. to midnight on March 30.

“What will we do there?  Drink beer and listen to our music, of course!” Emelia wrote. “We’ve also decided to have a CD-exchange for those bands who want to participate.”

Seeking a site for a Seattle party, RPM participant Levi Fuller looked no further than his own home. Fuller spent February playing guitar, electric and upright bass, pianos, drums and vocals in preparation for his 10-song CD, “The I Is Not Always Me.” After finishing the album, he set to work organizing a listening party at his house in Seattle.

“I like having music-oriented parties at my house, and it’s been a while since we’ve had one, so this seemed like a good excuse,” Fuller stated in an e-mail. “Add to that the opportunity to meet other Seattle area music-making weirdos, and how could I say no?”

The recording process was surprisingly smooth for Fuller, and he hopes the party will come together just as easily. He looks forward to checking out other submissions and meeting fellow musicians from the Seattle area.

“I’m very curious to hear what everyone did,” he said. “We’ll have a few different stereos set up in different rooms playing everybody’s CDs, and we’ll probably have a room for the official RPM stream as well.”

Emelia also looked forward to meeting and hearing other RPM musicians in her home city. Many participants have already mailed each other CDs or shared music though their virb.com and MySpace sites, as well as the sample engine on the RPM site.

“It will be great to put faces to the bands and talk about how we created our music,” Emelia said. “Maybe some musical collaborations will come out of this, who knows?”

Sutter, too, hopes the listening party will lead to musical connections that last beyond February and March. “I’m hoping that maybe some of us may be musically compatible enough to do some gigs together,” he said. “At the very least, I love to encourage other musicians to keep doing what they’re doing.

”Three-piece hip-hop band Brooknology stepped to the plate in New York after completing their self-titled debut album. The party will take place at the three-story home of band member Norbert Morvan, who goes by the pseudonym Eddie Caine.

“It will be at least three floors of madness, in addition to the backyard (weather permitting of course),” Morvan stated by e-mail. “The goal is to make it not only a listening party, but an old fashioned house party (basement, main floor, top floor) with music, drinks, performances, games and any other random thing that should come up. It’s going to be a great night!”

Morvan said he wanted to host a party to celebrate both the success of the challenge and the completion of the band’s first CD. About 30 people had registered for the event by March 22, and that number does not include Brooknology’s personal friends. Like other party hosts, Morvan anticipates striking a chord with fellow musicians.

“Any individual or group with passion for music we would support and love to hear,” Morvan said. “It’s hard to remain consistent in this industry, so when a genuine person reveals truth and passion, it’s good for the soul.”

For Indi, the RPM Challenge proved to be an educational experience. She and her musical partner, Farrell, have been writing songs together for several years but had never previously released a recording. She completed most of “Oh Empty” in the final week of the month. The strict deadline motivated her to produce a finished product, even when the songs did not come easily.

“February was the hardest I have ever worked at music in my life,” Indi said. “The gift that came was that I found out that music can be good even if I have to work at it… February showed me that sometimes you have to walk away from songs and sometimes you have to sit there and toil for hours or days until you get it right.”

At times, the challenge made Indi question her commitment to songwriting. Nevertheless, she hopes to participate again in 2008. “There were a few times where I thought, ‘What was I thinking, what did I get myself into?’ Typical RPMer thoughts,” she said. “There were points where I got too focused on the deadline and the need for perfection that my creativity wasn’t flowing as I wanted it to. I found that if I just put the pen down and let it go for the evening I would be prolific the next day. The challenge forced me through all sorts of creative hurdles that probably would have taken years to work through going at the pace we had been.”

Emelia agreed that the deadlines imposed by the RPM Challenge heightened her creative output. The noncompetitive nature of the challenge made her feel like part of a team of hundreds of musicians working toward the same end, and although bouts of writer’s block and technical glitches tested her resolve, she remained determined to cross the finish line.

“The noncompetitive aspect allowed for all sorts of creative ideas to unfold freely, and the encouragement, forums and blogs kept it going when it got tough,” she said. “So far, I’m getting fantastic feedback on my album, and my life literally has new direction. The Challenge was the best thing I ever did.”

Sutter also admitted to going down “a few dark alleys” during the writing and recording process. Producing songs quickly has never been his forte, and trying to stay focused on music throughout the month was at times stressful.

“Sometimes I had to video myself with my camera phone singing while driving to capture snippets of songs,” Sutter said. “Unlike my normal life, in which I make up songs regularly but only write and record a small number of them, I had to catch everything that came through my mind.”

Noting the band was relatively inexperienced in the recording field, Morvan said completing an RPM album was painstaking work. But he and his band mates are pleased with the results. “Brooknology is the study of life in the borough of Brooklyn, and the fusion of poetry, hip-hop, love, life, pain, joy, sadness and hope,” he said.

Although Emelia does not personally know any other RPM participants, she said Chicago harbors a fecund musical environment rife with bands and musicians. The same is true of Seattle and Minneapolis, where rain and cold weather induce plenty of underground music making. And music scenes do not get any bigger than New York City.

But Indi noted that individual musicians, and not locations or scenes, provide the impetus for the creative process. “The city isn’t what’s important, it’s the musicians and their drive to make music that’s important,” Indi said. “This year has proven that the need to write and be pushed to write music crosses all barriers.”

RPM organizers spent the first weeks of March loading CDs into the RPM Jukebox, created by collaborators at Hatchling Studios, and entering album information into a vast database. The tedious work entailed many late nights and long hours, but gave organizers a chance to hear firsthand some of the astoundingly diverse material produced in this year’s challenge. From hip-hop to adventure metal, electronic to folk, humor to spoken word, the CDs cover every genre and style imaginable. On March 30, the public will have a chance to hear for themselves.

The listening party in Portsmouth kicks off with opening ceremonies at The Music Hall at 6:30 p.m. on Friday before fanning out to parties at the Press Room, the Portsmouth Brewery, the Muddy River, AK’s, and an all-ages show at RiverRun Bookstore.

As artists commemorate their February accomplishments and revel in the mountains of music that resulted from the RPM Challenge, they should also celebrate the ongoing evolution of music itself. Unlike finite resources of the material world, the reserves of musical creativity will never dry up.

“There are so many types of musical ideas and sounds that have been birthed by the challenge,” Emelia said. “It’s exciting to watch what new ideas will come out of it as time goes on, and I love being a part of that creative evolution.”

For more information about all the project participants, visit www.rpmchallenge.com.