Social media fuel Roots ’N Blues ’N BBQ Festival’s hopes for a youth movement

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Social media fuel Roots ’N Blues ’N BBQ Festival’s hopes for a youth movement
September 6, 2011
By Aarik Danielsen
The Columbia Tribune

Making its fifth revolution around the spheres of Americana music, the Roots ’N Blues ’N BBQ Festival is seeking to deepen and widen its fan base. Organizers are looking to foster a youth movement by reaching out to younger concertgoers while staying true to a core audience, largely composed of adults 40 and older.

This year, the festival has taken a tumble, so to speak, into further applications of social media. To date, the festival has maintained a vibrant Web presence through its own site as well as Facebook and Twitter. After researching more visually based means of social media, organizer Steve Sweitzer became convinced Roots ’N Blues could reach younger music lovers through Tumblr, a microblogging platform that allows users a great deal of flexibility and creativity, its design allowing them to post video, audio, photography, text and more.

“We knew that’s where a lot of college-age and younger audience lived,” Sweitzer said. “You spend any time on Tumblr, you’ll notice that right away.”

The subsequent site —rootsnbluesfestival.tumblr.com — is a storehouse for images and information about a wide-ranging spectrum of roots and soul artists. Sweitzer and other contributors have mined photography websites, state historical archives and other available media to create — and curate, he said — a truly authentic experience for anyone interested in the past, present and future of roots music. Thus, the website’s tagline: “the virtual museum for everything roots and blues.”

Some images relate directly to the festival, depicting artists who’ve played in Columbia; others constitute something of a wish list, representing artists the festival would love to host someday. Still others pay tribute to late, great artists whose work jives with the festival’s aesthetic. Sweitzer hopes those who visit the site will do so while in the mood to discover, perhaps finding a new favorite artist or two. When listeners come across a genre that resonates, they often poke around in that “box” to find more, he said.

“We think of Tumblr as that box or treasure chest, if you will,” he added.

At least 4,000 other people have mined the treasure offered on the website, subscribing as followers; Sweitzer said many have provided positive feedback, thanking the festival for “pointing” them “in the right direction” musically. What Sweitzer and company have experienced on Tumblr has at least some connection to a wider “phenomenon” he and others have observed. Sweitzer noted a “groundswell of popularity” for the spirit and sound of old-time roots music.

In a May report, NPR’s Geoffrey Himes pointed to the mainstream success of acts such as The Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons as evidence of the form’s appeal to younger audiences.

“These two bands … have shown that young people can respond in large numbers to the combination of fiddles, acoustic guitars and doghouse bass played with the same energy as punk rock,” Himes wrote.

Artists such as David Wax Museum, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and, to some extent, Toubab Krewe come to this year’s Roots ’N Blues ’N BBQ Festival as young torchbearers of the great roots music tradition, just as contemporaries such as Punch Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show and Carolina Chocolate Drops traverse the same terrain, appealing to audiences that appreciate their blend of youthful vigor and deep respect for musical forefathers.

In some sense, Sweitzer hopes younger audiences come for the likes of David Wax Museum but leave having gained a newfound appreciation for venerable artists such as Robert Cray or Ralph Stanley.

“I don’t want to be the guy bringing your dad’s music,” Sweitzer said. “But I do want to be the kind of kooky uncle that can turn you on to a Deep Purple record.”

At the same time, Sweitzer affirmed his resolve to satisfy older adults who have bought into Roots ’N Blues over the past five years. He doesn’t see the two pursuits as being musically exclusive. Fostering a spirit of discovery — and rediscovery of artists an older generation grew up with but might have lost track of — is Sweitzer’s mission. Wherever that spirit is embraced, online or in downtown Columbia, Sweitzer is sure a Roots ’N Blues fan will be born.