Scott Strickland is the type of individual that makes the modifications he intends to see. Over the last 2 years, the songwriter and Songs Payment participant has actually utilized his Sonic Guild honor to explore thoroughly. While taking a trip, he discovered an absence of fellow working-class Black artists in the songwriting and rock-based categories. Back in Austin, he began Black Artists Rock.
” In all of the rooms that I remained in, I had not been actually seeing individuals that resemble me,” Strickland claims. “I had not been actually seeing any type of various other artists of shade that were songwriters, particularly, hopping on the phase with a guitar and playing some tracks or fronting a band with a Telecaster or some type of rock attire.”
Strickland understood Black rock lyricists, acoustic strummers, and Fender shredders were around, and in Texas particularly– he indicates Leon Bridges and Abraham Alexander– however the even more Strickland looked, the less places he saw within the songs economic situation where these musicians were being sustained and commemorated. Normally, Strickland started out to produce among his very own. In 2014, he released Black Artists Rock, a three-part collection showcasing Black songwriters, consisting of Strickland himself, in a curated, listening-room-style area. This year’s performance happens at Pershing Hall for 3 successive 3rd Thursdays, September via November.
” The songwriter ambiance offers itself to a much more intimate place,” Strickland describes. “We desire this to be like we’re playing in somebody’s living-room and Pershing is type of offering us that ambiance.”
Poet Hawkins, a Los Angeles-born, Austin-based lyricist, started the 2025 collection, doing piano-centered tracks and talking about the tales behind them on phase with Strickland, that did several of his very own emotional songs. Sharing a little bit regarding the life behind the songs throughout these intimate efficiencies is an important component of the experience Strickland intends to produce for artists and target markets with Black Artists Rock.
” There’s reality things behind a great deal of these tracks,” Strickland describes, remembering a Waco-based artist, Zach Webb, that played in 2015 and opened regarding his mommy’s sudden death and his battle to elevate himself and his bro. “When you begin placing the socioeconomic, racial story behind several of the tales that come to be tracks and after that obtain played to the masses– not to state that there’s an even worse or a far better point of view– however it’s simply a various point of view than individuals would generally anticipate.”
Giving these point of views and the entertainers behind them a system has an individual vibration for Strickland, sure, however the big-picture thinker likewise sees crucial possibility for enhancing financial results for Black artists in the Austin songs area.
” The measure for success for an independent artist boils down to area,” Strickland describes, showing the buck worth of links, name acknowledgment, and inter-scene regard for working-class artists whose earnings greatly depends upon scheduling programs.
” It is necessary that they’re showcased, it is necessary that they obtain their distinctions due to the fact that it assists them in regards to reservation and assists them in regards to having the ability to pay a band,” Strickland claims. “I see Black Artists Rock as one of the financial vehicle drivers that’s missing out on from the city of Austin and– from a wide-lens point of view, I believe it’s missing out on from songs as a whole.”
Not very important job is enjoyable, however Strickland locates delight in holding fellow songwriters and doing with each other. “I’m a talker,” he chuckles. “I have a great deal of points to state in regards to my trip, sharing my life tale.”
He likewise has lots of product to play. The filmmaker-turned-musician crafts poetic stories right into pop-rock kinds that remember coffee shop songwriters like Tracy Chapman, and motion picture vocalists like Jeff Buckley. As the collection host and manager, he’s sharing the limelight and currently really feeling the advantages of filling out this missing out on item of Austin’s songs challenge.
” It’s extremely gratifying to have these brand-new tracks I’m dealing with and display to a group, and they obtain them well,” Strickland claims.
Cherri does at Pershing Hall for Black Artists Rock on Oct. 15 and Trey Privott of Los Shore does Nov. 17.
