One of the hardest-working people in the local music scene can’t even get into most shows. Meet Kirstin Tanner, the 13-year-old founder of Richmond Music Forum. Born out of a deep love of music and a desire to share local band information with teenagers and adults alike, Kirstin started a nonprofit Web site, richmondmusicforum.com, with features including a concert calendar, interviews and live performances by bands such as Carbon Leaf and Gwar. “My dad’s in a band and I really wanted to be in a band too, but I don’t play any instruments well,” Tanner says, laughing. “So, I figured interviewing bands would be even better.” With the help of her good friend Emily Turner, the middle-schooler hits the streets to interview bands that have submitted a request on the forum’s Web site as well as those scouted while surfing social networking sites such as Myspace. “It’s hard to balance it all,” Tanner says, “but I try to take some time each day after my homework to go online and listen to new bands and then send them a request on MySpace and then from there set up interviews. It’s actually all very organized.” Her dad, Brian Tanner, bassist for 59H20, helps her upload the finished product to her site and couldn’t be prouder of his pint-sized promoter. “She excels at anything she does,” Tanner says. “She took on this project that was totally her idea and ran with it.” It started innocently enough. “She wanted passes to a concert and they were something like $1,000, so she started exploring other options online for ways that she could meet people that she respected. She discovered the blogging idea and created a forum where she could interview local artists. Then, it went regional and then national. She’s progressed quite a bit.” Read more at StyleWeekly.com
Comments:
Tuesday, February 09, 2010 10:51:18 AM by Anonymous
The thing is kids today go to school at 7am get off around 330 pm and spend a good 4 hours a night on the Internet doing homework, researching videos and chatting it up on Facebook. Parents are working the multiple shifts, cooking, cleaning, paying bills, etc. So stories like this are no small miracles...it's the generation
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One of the hardest-working people in the local music scene can’t even get into most shows. 