By Chad Taylor
soundcheck@dmcityview.com

Ten bands from a variety of genres take over Hotel Fort Des Moines on Saturday, April 14. Tickets are $10 through tikly.co or $15 at the door.

Local music isn’t a pet. It’s not an appliance or some gadget in your computer bag. You don’t own it; the community isn’t there to serve your needs. If you’re going to draw a parallel to anything, local music is a relationship. It’s something you love, often times without even being able to adequately explain why. You work at it. Devote time to it. Encourage it. Nurture and support it.

Hang out at the same two bars with the same 30 people every weekend? Bask in the sheltered warmth of your friend’s band, telling one another what great friends to the scene you all are, but all the music that’s Not Us can sit and spin? You’re only servicing yourself. Dry-humping the parts of your lover you think are best, then rolling over and leaving the rest of them frustrated and withering on the vine.

The Des Moines Music Coalition isn’t a perfect entity. It’s been called clique-ish (usually by members of other cliques), and there are clearly two or three artists in town who’ve acquired “most favored” status. But to say that the DMMC supports those favored acts to exclusion, or to attempt to deny the positive effect the coalition has had on local music, is to be willfully ignorant. While critics have often knocked the DMMC’s populist tactics, the coalition has remained steadfast in its commitment to fostering the local community and encouraging the growth of local bands.

“The coalition had started (GDP in the spring and Little Big Fest in the fall) in order to cultivate the local music scene,” said DMMC Events & Festivals Committee Co-Chair Becky Migas, during an interview at Smokey Row. “GDP and Little Big Fest…were created in order to have a place that local bands can go and have their music seen. That started, and 80/35 kind of grew out of it.”

The job of finding new ways to promote the festivals and expand their reach in order to keep them fresh is one of the most important tasks for their sustained success and growth. It’s a job that Migas and her fellow committee members take seriously. One of the ways the DMMC keeps its festivals moving forward — perhaps the most important way — is by striving to continually introduce Des Moines to the newest members of its local music scene.

“New bands are always being created, and we never know what’s going to be out there. This year alone we have, I believe, five new bands on the bill that have never played the festival in the past, and three or four of them are bands who started last year. So it’s a great way to be able to get these bands to grow up in the community and get larger (followings),” Migas said.

The feeling of community that the DMMC looks for is a concept that many bands seem to get and embrace.

“One of the exciting things to see is how the bands interact,” Migas said. “For example, Hath No Fury has been really supportive of (the other) bands. They’ve been really great about promoting all the bands, and they’ve been talking to their fans saying, ‘Make sure you’re staying and catching everything.’ ”

For the musicians involved in this year’s GDP, the concept of loving and supporting local music isn’t one that’s based on the agenda of any one genre or group, it’s about 10 bands with different sounds and tastes getting together and doing what they love. More, please. CV