Is anybody out there? Is anybody listening?

One of the drawbacks to living in the same area for your whole life is learning, maybe the hard way, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That’s certainly true for my experiences with the local music scene. Thirty years ago, the only places we could get to play were redneck dives and Virginia Tech frats. There wasn’t much money to be made, there wasn’t much interest in local music, most venues didn’t even have a proper stage, and if you wanted to actually make a living playing music, you had go elsewhere.

Nobody thought of performing solo; there were no coffee houses, no listening rooms. If you weren’t in a band, forget it. And original music? You might as well announce that you had an STD.

My first bands were typically made up of local-area friends; later, I played mostly with musicians who were in the area primarily to attend college. Battling constant member turnover and playing covers almost exclusively, we survived the glam rock and disco eras, when DJs were pushing live bands aside, and staggered into the punk era of the late 1970s.

About that time, there was a buzz revolving around the music scene in Athens, Ga., with up-and-coming bands such as R.E.M., the B-52s, Love Tractor, and the like. The scene there was fueled by college students—and here in the New River Valley we were in the middle of two growing universities. The drinking age was 19. Soon, clubs for young people started springing up all over the NRV.

The area changed; we changed with it. Thus the Sneakers was born in 1979—the most successful band I’ve ever been in. We got started by playing the last “Deadwood Days” (now Steppin’ Out) in Blacksburg and we really took off after hooking up with the frat and club scene in Radford.

At the same time, Blacksburg had an original alternative scene going with Nøt Shakespeare in the forefront. They set the standard high and a lot of talented originals bands followed in their wake. Virginia Tech’s student radio station, WUVT, began “The Local Zone,” a program that featured local musicians exclusively. That weekly show had a long waiting list.

The Sneakers hooked up with a booking agency and played frats, private parties, and nightclubs all over Virginia. We made a LOT of money. We regularly packed Radford’s Hideout (now BTs).

The Sneakers broke up in 1983 when we were still one of the area’s biggest draws. After a couple of years, I resurfaced with another cover band. What I didn’t count on was the raising of the drinking age to 21. That, in my opinion, severely damaged the music scene in this area. College students retreated to the frats and private parties where they could drink illegally; the “above ground” venues started trucking in established sure-thing outside bands.

And at the clubs, we were no longer asked “What kind of music do you play?” We were asked instead “How many people can you draw?” It became all about money. A lot of bands (and a lot of clubs) folded. We played a lot of outdoor festivals, multi-band events where, in lieu of pay, we played for “exposure.” Local bands once again had to play accessible and recognizable covers to survive. I got real tired of it.

Finally, in 1990, against all odds, I co-founded what we intended to be an all-original alternative band, the Visible Shivers, based in Blacksburg. We got together just as Nøt Shakespeare was tiring of fighting the good fight. I knew what we were up against but I had an all-consuming desire to play original music after years of playing covers. I felt like my musical soul was at stake.

For 10 years we tried to teach this local musical pig to sing. And, as the old saying goes, it only frustrated us and made the pig mad. We got great reviews and radio play—almost all of it outside this area. Early on, we were drawing 200 people per gig to Blacksburg’s South Main Café, but we were told that our audience wasn’t drinking enough beer, so we lost out to “gimmick” bands, “party” bands, and the like. Plus, we weren’t just competing with other bands: an exploding home computer revolution was keeping our potential audiences out of the clubs and glued to their computer screens. (That’s still a problem!) It was hard to get a gig and harder still to get people to attend. The old scene died out more with each passing year.

The critically acclaimed (and cash poor) Visible Shivers shut down in 2000. The last thing I wanted to do after that was start another band. I grabbed my acoustic guitar and started performing solo, still intending to play my original music.

Every year since, my number of gigs has increased. There are a number of venues in this area, mostly coffee houses, that will book a solo acoustic act. There’s still not anywhere near enough money in it for me to give up my day job but at least I’m not losing as much money as I did when I was in bands.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m still performing after all these years. My answer is simple: I love it. Always have, always will. I can only hope to continue to keep moving forward while still maintaining my musical integrity. That hasn’t changed. I try hard not to be just another “balding white geezer on a stool” playing worn-out covers.

If anything, I’d like to see somebody start up a local venue based on the Birchmere (Alexandria, Va.) or Eddie’s Attic (Decatur, Ga.) or the Down Home (Johnson City, Tenn.) concept—a place where music is the main focus, not the menu or the nightlife, a real listening room, a place where local musicians could play regularly as well. Coffee houses are fine but, around here, we’re still more or less pushing tables and chairs aside and stuffing the performers in the corner—and the whole event is rarely treated as more than an afterthought.

Locally, most bands are still made up of kids whose commitment is dictated by their college schedules; the rest are still made up of music veterans who play more for their own kicks than for their audiences. Nevertheless, there are tons of talented musicians in this area and almost every one of them has to go out of the area for truly decent gigs. Way too many of them, once they realize how static, stodgy, and stultifying the music scene truly is around here, never come back—or give up performing in public altogether.

There are more places to play now, but, other than that, not much has changed in 30 years. Am I right, y’all? Uh, y’all? Uh, is anybody out there? Is anybody listening?

David Simpkins is a long-time musician, a graphic designer at Virginia Tech, and a New River Valley native. You can find out more by visiting his newly redesigned Web site, www.davidsimpkins.com and subscribing to his newsletter, the Meadow Creek Gazette.