Introducing River City Sounds, A New Podcast Focused On Local Music

As Richmond’s music scene continues to grow and deepen, a new podcast looks to highlight the surge by focusing on the new additions and overlooked mainstays that are helping making the musical community flourish.

River City Sounds is a new, DIY podcast brought to you by local musicians, artists, and fans involved in Richmond’s musical community, aiming to highlight the growth of the scene through live recordings and interviews with talented bands and artists. Their first episode is available now at RiverCitySounds.com and features a captivating performance by local band Colpa Mia as well as an informal and casual interview with the band members.

Headed up by Cole Curry, the podcast developed from a visceral house show experience earlier this year.

“River City Sounds came about after a show in the summer of 2018 fell through and I decided to host two bands at my house,” Curry explained. “Colpa Mia opened for Nervous Nothings for a one time intimate performance to about fifteen people in my music room. After a couple songs, I had the idea to record the performance. A few songs after that, the relaxed tone of the show had set in, audience members began asking questions, and it was such an intimate and memorable performance that I knew I needed to keep doing shows like this and bring it to a larger audience.”

Curry has been a subtle contributor to the musical scene, tied to musical projects like Big Loud Awful Sound and Nervous Nothings, and he recognized the need for an outlet that can expose and showcase the emerging artists, or, in his words, “legitimately local bands trying their hardest to get recognized for their hard work and talent in an over-populated scene.”

After that initial recording, the next step was trying to figure out how to make it happen. To do that, Curry leaned on a changing roster of musicians, engineers, photographers, and even fans.

“It’s a revolving cast of people,” Curry detailed. “We have about 12 to 15 people contributing to this project in whatever way they can. For recording the episode, we have two audio engineers working along with our friend Kenny McCaskill to record it all. As for the interview process, we’re going to try and have a revolving panel of three interviewers. We’re still messing with the structure and recording of the episodes in order to best capture the feeling of some of the behind the scenes banter between artists of all kind.”

The first episode is up now, with a fascinating performance by indie pop act Colpa Mia, a band Curry has been aware of since their start. “Their lead singer and guitar player Winston [Sanders] introduced himself to me after a show I had played,” Curry stated. “He wanted to tell me about an idea he had for a band that was just getting started. It impressed me that he was reaching out and making connections before having worked everything out. I feel like I watched their band grow and develop into who they are now and with inspiring this project, they’ve been able to provide more for my creative development than I was ever able to contribute to them.”

Currently, Curry and his team is hard at work getting the word out about the podcast, before they convene again later this month to record their second episode with Slogame, a band Curry first became aware of after a house show performance.

“I played the last show at S.ADD House run by Luke Perdue, which was such a huge honor,” Curry remembered. “Because of that, I began looking into the other bands performing that show and Slogame’s recordings and their subsequent performance really stood out to me. They’re new, but they definitely know how to market themselves which is something I really wanted to highlight. Another reason we created this was for others to benefit from the knowledge people in the scene have, and Slogame definitely has a wealth of knowledge in that regard. Hopefully highlighting their approach along with others will help the community grow and succeed together.

For the rest of the year, River City Sounds aims to release one episode a month, as well as a special fourth episode to be released sometime before the end of the year. Looking ahead to 2019, Curry states they’ll be releasing more frequently, but admits that they will have to wait and see how it all works around the creative team’s schedules.

The first episode of River City Sounds featuring Colpa Mia is out now over at RiverCitySounds.com, and keep on the look-out for episode two featuring Slogame in November.