Photos by Patrick Wall

Avid Free Times readers will have noticed that we devote a great deal of space to Columbia’s music scene. And, indeed, there is no shortage of talented players in town.

But bands alone do not a scene make. Hence “Behind the Music,” a quick look at and admittedly inadequate pat on the back to some of the essential behind-the-scenes folks who make Columbia’s music scene happen.

Make no mistake: This is by no means a definitive list of all of Columbia’s surreptitious support staff. Rather, it’s a quick-hit cross-section of just a few of the people devoted to keeping live music alive in the Capital City, from club owners who provide a place for bands to play to bloggers and photographers documenting Columbia’s musical goings-on. Many people who play similar roles deserve similar acknowledgement and appreciation for their contributions as well. Nonetheless, the folks below have been included to give you, dear reader, an idea of the entire process it takes to make music happen — from booking a show to promoting it to making it sound good. Enjoy.

The Club Owners
Mike and Danny Lyons, New Brookland Tavern

Keeping Columbia’s oldest and longest-running music venue afloat is no easy feat. And, indeed, Mike and Danny Lyons have run into a few rough spots since purchasing the venue from Robert and Catherine Moore over four years ago.

“We made typical mistakes of lack of experience and lack of preparation,” Danny says. “I don’t think either of us were ready to jump in. It took us a year-and-a-half of screwing up to figure out how bad we were screwing up.”

Nowadays, the Tavern and the Lyons brothers are on steady footing — they’ve recently expanded the Tavern’s bar area — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. In addition to managing the staff and keeping the bar stocked, the Lyonses also handle booking the venue, which hosts live music seven nights a week.

“If we genuinely like a band and decide to book them based on that,” Mike says, “it always does horrible. We always lose money.”

“That’s where the challenge comes in,” Danny adds. “Because no matter what you listen you, it doesn’t mean you’re going to go to a show. That’s why we have so many metal and hardcore shows. That’s one of the genres that people want to see live.”
But the Lyonses are conscious not to let the venue be tagged as the token metal club.

“We do everything,” Danny says.

There are other myths the Lyonses can dispel, too.

“People think that since we own our own business that we’re rich,” Danny says with a laugh. “But we have great hours.”

And the hours aren’t the only perk to owning the Tavern.

“Everyone here knows each other, so we’re always passing around drinks, we’re always hanging out together and having a good time,” Mike says. “Sometimes that can get you in trouble. I guess the bad day is having to wake up after those nights.”

Good days or bad days, the Lyons brothers wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s kind of a nice job,” Danny concedes. “I wouldn’t want to start a nine-to-five again.”

The Venue Manager
Travis Maynard, Five Points Pub

In just a short two years, the Five Points Pub has almost single-handedly revitalized the live music game in Five Points. And much of that credit goes to Travis Maynard, the Pub’s man of many hats: Maynard books the talent and manages the daily operations of the club. Indeed, Maynard’s seen firsthand the effect the Pub’s calendar has had on the surrounding area.

“I’ve seen a lot of live music pop up elsewhere down here since we’ve opened up,” Maynard says. “For three or four years, nobody looked down here. And now it’s finally coming back. People see that it’s doing well for us, and they’ve jumped on board. So I mean, yeah, I guess it’s helped a little bit.”

Maynard was part of a group that opened the Five Points Pub two years ago; the Oklahoma native learned the venue-managing ropes as a bartender at Willy’s, where a prominent expatriate musician introduced him to the ins and outs of music promotion.

“They always had really good acoustic music [at Willy’s],” Maynard says. “Patrick Davis was there a lot, and we became friends. And then we opened up the Pub on Santee and we started doing live acoustic shows with the Texas country and Red Dirt Road stuff. And Patrick ... walked me through how to get sponsors and how much to pay sound guys and stuff like that.”

The Pub on Santee eventually morphed into the Five Points Pub, now one of the larger music rooms in Columbia. The biggest challenge to booking and managing the Pub, Maynard says, is its location.

“That’s the hardest thing … [is] keeping it away from being strictly a music venue,” Maynard says. At the end of the day, we’re still a bar in Five Points. And that’s something we fight with. We’re constantly battling and constantly trying to keep that image open as far as being a college bar. But we’re definitely ... about live music.”

And though the Pub’s recently changed ownership, Maynard still has his job.

“They wanted to make sure that I would stay on keep everything running basically the same,” Maynard says.

Hey, why mess with what works?

The Booking Agent
Charles Wilkie, All-In Entertainment

Chances are if your favorite act has played in Columbia or the surrounding area, Charles Wilkie’s brought it to town. As one of the heads of All-In Entertainment, Wilkie’s been responsible for booking the St. Patrick’s Day Festival and other heavy happenings, not to mention his work with the Five Points After Five concert series and Headliners. Hard to believe that Wilkie more or less fell into the gig.

“It wasn’t a grand idea,” Wilkie says. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be a concert promoter.’ I went from being in a band to being in band management and helping out clubs here and there and helping out with promotion. And then all of a sudden, I go and set up a college gig and I said, ‘Hey, I like doing this.’”

But despite his enthusiasm and experience, getting All-In off the ground wasn’t easy.

“For years,” Wilkie says, “[former co-owner Dave Britt] did his bartending thing to make his money and I did my landscaping thing to make my money. It was definitely not a kind of deal where we were making a bunch of money off of music.”

“We learned by hard knocks,” he continues. “That’s what’s made growing this company so much fun, getting our butts kicked together.”

The secret to All-In’s success, he says, is booking “shows that make sense for Columbia.”

“And it’s not always the coolest thing to do,” he explains. “But if you want to survive, you have to think with your brain. It’s a very tricky line to walk.”

“We’ve survived on making good decisions,” he adds.

That, and building relationships.

“Really and truly, at the end of the day, it’s all about building relationships,” Wilkie says.
“And that’s something we pride ourselves on … We’re a blue-collar company. We’re very proud of our ethics and relationships. We definitely feel like we deserve to succeed.”

The Artists
Sara Thomas and Nick Wilson, Half and Half Designs

If you’re into local music, you’ve likely seen the work of Sara Thomas and Nick Wilson.
Theirs are the radical, brightly colored, handmade, screen-printed posters hanging in venues and hipster hangouts across town; they’ve also designed album covers for the likes of Mike Mewborne and The Heist and the Accomplice. (The pair also designed the marketing materials for John Waters’ appearance in Columbia.) Started by Thomas and Wilson while both were still attending USC, The Half and Half have seen a meteoric rise to one of the top design firms in the city, state and region.

“It was always our idea that nobody really thought of printing by different methods and printing by hand,” Wilson says. “Everyone was getting on computers and doing all this work. And regardless of who had the best design or the worst design, it was all printed on the paper stock and all used the same paint. So that basically made a group of people that had the same look. So I just decided to do things by hand, even if the design sucked.”
Nowadays, none of the Half and Half’s unique designs suck: Thomas and Wilson are the recipients of numerous local and regional awards, and the pair were recently featured in the prestigious Print magazine.

The added attention can only do wonders for increasing the ever-expanding empire of The Half and Half, which has seen their posters hanging in such regional venues as the Orange Peel in Asheville and the EARL in Athens.

“Most people come to us because of our aesthetic or because of our past work,” Thomas says.

Still, Thomas and Wilson don’t think their designs adhere to any particular aesthetic.

“We pride ourselves on actually listening to the music and getting to know the client and knowing what they’re doing,” Wilson says. “I hate having a style. I hate being that guy.”
The Half and Half’s New Year’s resolution: “Trying to reach a more national level,” Thomas says. Part of that process involves moving into a new office — one on the ground floor.

“I’m tired of moving things up stairs,” Thomas laughs.

The Disk Jockeys
Randy Borawski and Brent Lundy, WXRY-FM 99.3

“Our show is basically a one-hour infomercial for local music,” says Randy Borawski of WXRY Unsigned. Along with Brent Lundy, his co-host, Borawski hosts a show dedicated exclusively to local music. As a booking agent, Borawksi was a natural fit for the gig.

“I was booking at Jammin’ Java, and I met with Steve [Varholy] when he first started the radio station,” Borawski says. “And he said, ‘Well, we’re doing this local show and I think we can do a tie-in.’ And somehow I weaseled my way in.”

Borawski, who had four years’ worth of radio experience with Oldies 103, jumped at the chance to give airtime to some of his talented friends.

“I have a bunch of friends in town, so I went to them and said, ‘I’m putting together this show, I think your music is good, you’re my friend, give me your music,’” Borawski says.
“And after that, I used the might of MySpace to track down bands.”

As the show’s grown, Borawski’s expanded the show’s playlist beyond his circle of friends.
“Our whole thing is that we’re going to try to help out the people that come to us and want to be on the air. There are bands I’ve [told], ‘Hey, man, I want you to come on the show.’ And to me, that’s a no-brainer. If someone asks you to come on the radio, you come on the radio!”

For Borawski, it’s all about supporting the scene.

“To me, I think a local radio station should do what it can do for the local music scene,”
Borawksi says. “It all feeds into itself. The stronger local scene you have, the more national acts will notice and come here. I think you’re doing yourself and people living in your town a disservice by not letting them know about these great bands. These bands are just as good or better than bands that tour all the time. I don’t understand why people sit on the outside and say the music scene sucks. Well, do something about it, then.”

The Sound Engineer
John Albrecht, New Brookland Tavern

They don’t call John Albrecht “Magic John” for nothing; in addition to being the main man behind the soundboard for the New Brookland Tavern, Albrecht’s gone on national tours with former local major-label signees Boxing Day and Jacksonville hardcore band Evergreen Terrace, and he’s toured Europe with local hardcore heroes Stretch Arm Strong.

Such rewards are the payoff of a long process for Albrecht.

“I started off playing in bands when I was in high school in New Jersey, and I got into live music that way,” he says. “Then when I was 18, I got a little Tascam cassette four-track to just record my own stuff, and I ended up recording stuff for other people. And at that point, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do in college, and I decided to just go to school for audio, because it was more fun than being an English major.”

Those bands wouldn’t take just anyone on tour, and Albrecht credits his mixing magic to his extensive music library.

“A sound engineer should be familiar with different genres and styles of music and know what to do for each genre to sound good,” Albrecht says. “I mean, you wouldn’t make a kick drum same for a death metal band as you would for a jazz band.”

The trick, Albrecht says, is having a good ear.

“If you’re able to picture what you want the music to sound like in your head, you can turn a few knobs on a soundboard and adjust a few things and make it sound like you want it to sound,” he says.

The Photographer
Graeme Fouste, freelance photographer

You can trace Graeme Fouste’s success as a photographer to his failures as a musician.
“I tried the whole band thing and it really just wasn’t my cup of tea,” Fouste says. “And I’ve always looked for other ways to express my creativity. And along the way, I met certain people who did photography.”

All in all, it’s worked out well for Fouste; in addition to the freelance work he does for Free Times, Fouste’s photos have been featured in national magazines such as Alternative Press, Time and People. For Fouste, photography is still a moonlighting gig; he pays the bills as a production assistant for WIS-TV. But above all it’s a labor of love, though it comes with certain perils.

“It’s definitely tough,” Fouste says. “[Sometimes] I’ll have a flash in one hand and a camera in the other, and I’ll have kids grabbing at my arm from the pit. So I’m trying not to fall over, and I’ve got a $700 camera in one hand and a $300 flash in the other. You just have to work with it.”

Showgoers will also notice Fouste climbing the rafters and monitors at places like New Brookland Tavern to capture his subjects. After all, a photographer has to go where the action is, but, as Fouste says, he couldn’t do it without the trust of the subjects he’s shooting.

“You only get that kind of stuff when you build a connection with the people you’re working with,” Fouste says.

As for his visual style, Fouste has a simple explanation.

“I want my photos to stand out,” Fouste says. “I want someone to look at my work and say, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’ And I think that’s what everyone strives for.”
Given Fouste’s impressive body of work, mission accomplished.

The Blogger
David Stringer, scenesc.com

Clad in a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt and a ragged Detroit Tigers baseball cap, David Stringer looks like your average USC student. But unlike the average Gamecock undergrad, Stringer’s got his finger on the pulse of the Columbia music scene; in addition to slinging the guitar, Stringer curates scenesc.com, a blog dedicated to music made and played in South Carolina, particularly in the Capital City. Stringer says he started the site in July because he felt that, well, someone should do it.

“I’m trying to do my part in the music scene,” Stringer says. “There weren’t any other web sites out there … for bands to get in front of a lot of people.”

Since launching the site, Stringer’s become a fast favorite in the local music scene, and scenesc.com offers what Stringer calls a “one-stop shop for local music lovers.

“They can read about shows, they can watch videos,” Stringer says. “If they’re out of town, they can catch up on what they missed.”

The reaction from bands, Stringer says, has been “awesome.”

“They love it,” Stringer says. “I started out taking pictures; I wasn’t even going to do videos. But no one was doing video of local shows. And now anyone can come and find videos of local bands.”

As for the future of the site, Stringer’s goals are modest: He’d like to continue to add more video to the site; he’d like for the site to become more interactive; and, ultimately, he’d like for the site to be self-sustaining. But Stringer also knows that for as much of a labor of love his web site is, he doesn’t want to be running it forever.

“I want to pass it on,” Stringer says. “I never want it to become stale. Maybe there’ll be a 19-year-old kid who really loves it as much as I do. And if they come along, they can have it. Just so it stays alive and kicking.”