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Meredith and I went to the Homade Genius festival this weekend and had a ton of fun hanging out with friends and meeting new people.  I went on Friday night and got to check out Dignan, Dylan Gilbert, Campbell, Farewell Flight and a handful of other bands.

We filmed these two acoustic sessions with Besides Daniel/Molly Parden and Tim Walker in the parking area that evening.  Both of them turned out great and it was great meeting all of them and running into them in.  These are three artists that our friends at The Blue Indian turned us on to and we’ll hopefully have them in Columbia soon for a house show.

One of the best parts with being involved with the Homemade Genius festival was the networking factor.  We met Paul Skelton about a month ago and got to hang out with him a long time a Friday.  Paul took some great photos from the festival and we have some of them up for viewing now.  We’ll be adding more, so if you don’t see your band now, the picture will probably show up later.  Paul just made the move to Lexington, SC so if you like his photos get in touch with him and have him come shoot your show.

We’ll be adding more footage of Dignan coming soon!

BUY TICKETS

Homemade Genius and the town of Ninety Six will be hosting their first Music, Art and Film festival September 10, 11 and 12th in historic downtown Ninety Six, South Carolina.

This years festival will feature 60 bands on 4 stages featuring all genres.  The grassroots festival is designed to feature independent arts, crafts, music and film, not only from South Carolina, but from across the nation and Canada.

Some of Scene SC’s favorite bands will be participating in the festival this year and we’re excited to be involved. Also involved is our BFF blog The Blue Indian, who are bringing some of the best bands from their 2010 sampler CD.

This years line up includes Dignan, The Restoration, Postcard Fiction, Standing Small, Arthur Alligood, Besides Daniel, A Brighter Life, All New Badges, Pan, Dylan Gilbert, Farewell Flight, Oh Dorian and Rova Zotella.

Check out our first post ever a year ago!

When I started this website a year ago, I don’t think I realistically expected it to be where it is today.  After running the website for a couple of months hits were staying steady between 25-50 a day and I was really trying to figure out if it was worth it.  I started the website in late June, because I needed something to do.  Work was slow and I felt like I needed to get more involved in a promising music scene where I thought artists weren’t getting the exposure that they deserved.  What I didn’t imagine was the amount of time it would take up in my life.  Last October/November I was working 50-60 hour weeks at my day job.  Finding time for Scene SC was getting harder than I ever imagined it would be.  It seemed like every time I would be close to thinking about letting the website fade away, something would happen to make me realize people were paying attention.

The first person to say the words that I needed to hear to keep the website going was Mike Rogers of All Get Out in Charlotte, September 5th of last year.  In August I wrote a post about how there is a good and bad side to the music scene in South Carolina and about how some people out there are trying to take advantage of bands.  The post was really harsh, so I pulled it down within in an hour of posting it.  Mike told me that night that he really liked that post and that he reads the website daily.  He even showed it to me on his Google Reader.  At that point I decided to stop worrying about how many hits I was getting a day.  If one or only a handful of people are reading the site and it means something to them, I decided that it was worth it to keep going.

So let’s look at the numbers.

• July 2008 we had 291 unique hits to the site.
• June 2009 we had 3,873 unique visitors to the site.
• About 80% of our hits come from our home-base of Columbia.  We are working on changing that.
• We currently offer over 100 videos of bands including full sets.
• According to my bank account there has been over $3,000 invested in this site including video equipment, hosting fees, banners, getting into shows etc.
• The most hits we ever got in a day was 871
• Our most commented story was The Dino-Mech Vs. Blake Lewis Saga.  The Free-Times broke this.
• 5 of our favorite bands have broken up.
• 885 Twitter Followers
• 338 Posts
• 1,826 Comments
• 1 Full Time Scene SC’er and 4 Part Timers
• Over 200 shows attended.
• We’ve hooked up at least 2 couples
• Made Countless Friends
• Created 1 Music Community

I am going to attempt to make a list of people to Thank that really helped me with this website and it being where it is today.  I know I’ll leave someone important out.

Adam Fogle (Palmetto Scoop)  The site wouldn’t exist without him, My sister Meredith Stringer for editing every post on the website and going to more shows than me, Bentz Kirby, Pat Wall (The Free Times), Our Staff Stephen Russ, Bakari Lebby, Sarah Kobos.  My brother Jeffrey for investing in me and my parents for supporting me.  Our fans from the get go Kevin Morrissey, BK Kennedy, Will Armstrong, Steven Niedringhaus, Seth Birkes and Ben Dimond.  Homemade Genius and Ian!

Specific Bands that have really reached out to us including Marry a Thief, All Get Out, The Fire Tonight, This Machine Is Me, Kill Anties, The Decade,  The Reverie, The Restoration

These people Erich Skelton, Colin Brown, Brandon Kean, Brandon Wilks, Jeffrey McMicken, Nathan Hussey, Grayson Venters,  Mel Washington, Mike Rogers, Chad Rochester,Marcy Bozek WUSC, Otis Taylor at The State, Randy Borawski at WXRY, Austin Crane, Nate Puza, Ashleigh Lancaster, Will Flourance, Daniel Machado, Cayla Fralick, Blake Arambula, Nick Bays, Michael Crawford, Kevin Oliver