A little time has passed since we dusted off our beloved ‘Blogger Spotlight’ feature, but just last month we found a reason to resurrect the once thriving series, and if all goes as planned we will have several new installments for you to enjoy posted throughout the summer. We apologize for the time away, but sometimes you have to take a step back and think about whether or not continuing a series actually makes sense. In this case, it does, and we hope that remains to be true for the foreseeable future.
36 Vultures is a site that first came on my radar thanks to outreach from founder Joel Funk. Joel had learned of my label, Antique Records, and was anxious to speak with one of our artists. Having never heard of his site prior to receiving his message, I quickly pulled up the zine’s homepage and began to click around in hopes of finding something special. What I discovered, which admittedly did not take long to find, was a growing collection of well written and insightful content geared toward promoting musicians big and small to a new, younger generation of music fans. I was so impressed, in fact, that I immediately replied to Joel and pitched him about appearing on this blog. We also connected him with our talent, of course, but I knew it was important to share Joel’s perspective on the music business through this site. Thankfully, he agreed.
You can find my conversation with Joel about 36 Vultures and everything he hopes to accomplish with his still young site below. After you do so, please make it a point to follow the site on Twitter. While you’re at, go ahead and follow Haulix as well.
H: It’s great to be able to feature you on our site. I have to be honest and say I didn’t learn of 36 Vultures until you and I discussed the band Well Kept Things over email about a month ago. What is the origin story for your site?
J: I’m excited to be featured on the site! I love reading interviews like these because not only does it let you get to know some of your favorite bloggers, but it gives you a little bit of insight into how they keep their site afloat. It’s a huge help. The origin story for the website sounds so boring to me, but it’s the honest truth. At one point, I wrote reviews for a website called FuckYourScenes – and they were absolutely terrible. I look back at those reviews and cringe. Anyway, I eventually just stopped writing for the website, but wanted to continue writing somewhere else. I was still confident enough in my own writing and had applied to write for PropertyOfZack and when I never heard anything back decided to start doing my own thing. The first review on the site was for an album I actually did the cover art for, Speak Low If You Speak Love’s original release of their debut album ‘Everything But What You Need.’ That was late 2013/early 2014. We didn’t start posting news until May 28th of 2014 when approached by a band called Pissghetti to post about a music video and a tape that saw all proceeds going to charity. Here we are now. Thanks Pissghetti!
H: The name 36 Vultures is pretty peculiar. What’s the story behind it?
J: I ended up using the name because it was my [personal] twitter handle at the time and I couldn’t think of anything else to use. The name comes from a lyric to a You Me and Everyone We Know song called “A Little Bit More.” The line reads “I’ve got fifteen elephants sitting on my chest/thirty six vultures picking at my flesh/solo-man overboard without a life vest/Now I’m a little weighed down, but I’m doing my best.” YM&EWK is my absolute favorite band, and I’m happy to have a name that reflects that. I still sometimes wish I could say something cheesy and dumb like “Yeah…vultures. You know, because they pick things apart? That’s an album review and it just suits us very well” just so I could laugh about it afterwards.
H: What kind of music and coverage can people expect to find on your site?
J: When I describe the website to inquiring older co-workers, I tend to paint a really broad stroke and claim to cover “alternative” music. I say this because to most of the 30-somethings I work with, “emo” is a word that will elicit not only dismissal, but jokes at the same time. When talking to friends or family, I very proudly say that we focus on emo, pop punk, and hardcore bands. It really boils down to whatever we’re feeling in the moment, which is usually pretty well reflected in the news posts and content.
As far as coverage, that’s something that I’m always looking to expand upon. Right now, we have a loose schedule that we like to follow. We post news from press releases whenever we can and then a schedule kicks in. Tuesdays and Thursdays at Noon are usually when we try to push album reviews. We don’t always have one to go up on Thursday, but if it’s a busy week, we absolutely will. Every other Wednesday we run a new feature called Press Play in which we introduce you to new bands that don’t get a lot of attention and [in our opinion] should have no trouble flourishing if given the opportunity. We want to give those bands that opportunity. I’m working on getting more comfortable with writing interviews and getting over this daunting fear of over the phone interviews so that we can start featuring more of those.
H: You’re a smart guy, so I’m sure you’re well aware of how many competing music blogs are in existence today. What makes 36 Vultures a unique destination?
J: I feel like that first sentence was a very fluid inflation and immediate deflation of my ego. Props. I think what makes 36vultures a unique destination is still a work in progress. We really care about the music we cover and the people involved in it, and we strive to make that the true focus of our actual content as opposed to just the news that we post. We run this really cool monthly feature on the site called The Mixtape Project. Originally that was going to be renamed, but it came time for the launch and I hadn’t thought of anything better, and so it is. That feature sees me asking people involved in the scene [bands, bloggers, pr, label-heads] to curate a mixtape following one of two structures. You can choose a theme or you can do a culmination of your favorite songs. An interesting point is that our current run is 50/50 on those structures. Our first came from Ryan Graham of Speak Low and State Champs talking about love. That bad boy came out on Valentine’s Day. Our last came from one of my dear friends, Sherridan of Punk Talks. She chose to make a mixtape full of songs that helped make her the person that she is, and it’s one of my favorites to actually listen to. tl;dr We care about the music and the conversation it creates. Fuck a page view.
H: I believe there are only five people listed on the staff page right now. Do you have additional contributors at this time, or is your team only those listed on that page? Do you have any plans to expand?
J: The team is still very small. We’re actually bringing in a second editor/new writer very soon, so we can add another name to that list. We’ve had one guest contributor and that was Luke Granered of Better Off. I would love to have more of those on the website because it usually brings forth content that people want to read. We’re also looking to just add more writers in general. Mainly people who want to work on reviews and op-ed pieces. We could use another reviewer or two to help lighten the load and allow for better written content, it’s just a matter of getting people who want to write to notice this site that’s still in it’s infancy.
H: There is a clear lack of advertisements on your site. Are you planning to try and profit from your efforts in any way moving forward, or is that not something you are currently concerned with?
J: Would I like to profit from what I’m doing? Absolutely. I just don’t know that I want to see a profit come from advertisements. I like the idea of what PropertyOfZack and The Runout are doing with funding via Patreon. It’s a great service that only asks you to support what you believe in. Before I can even think about that, we need to focus on building a reader-base and writing content that’s compelling enough to get people coming back. I think we’re just about there, we just need a little something to push us into people’s lives.
H: What would you say are the goals for 36 Vultures in the next year? How about the next five years?
J: The goals for 36vultures in the next year are to solidify what I’m already trying to do with the site. I want it to feel more like a “zine” type deal than I do a blog, and I’m trying to work on content that reflects that. Things like The Mixtape Project, Press Play, our very new Let’s Talk column, and hopefully some one or two more features will help to make that a reality. I want readers to be able to come to us for more than just album reviews and news, I want people to stick around, find something to read, and feel compelled to share it with the people they know. As for the next five years…who knows. Does that sound unprofessional? I would love the website to continue doing what it’s doing while seeing growth [in both popularity and creativity] but things are unpredictable. I try to set very realistic goals for myself that I don’t constantly feel defeated when the big ones don’t work out. So for now, I’m looking at things one year at a time. Hopefully, I’ll eventually feel comfortable enough to tell you how I see things going down years and years down the road, but who knows. Time is a fickle thing.
H: Outside the site, what are your own future aspirations? Are you hoping to work in the industry full time?
J: You mean besides paying off my student loans before I die? Well, the goal would be to do something in PR. There’s something about it that keeps drawing me to the idea. I think that stems back to really caring about the music and the people involved. I want to be able to have a hand in making a band/label/product that I believe in flourish. I’d love to have a plan to fall back on, and once I’ve paid off enough debt that I accumulated while thinking I wanted to teach small children and become a pawn in the governmental chess game called the Common Core, I want to go back to school for advertising. Ironic, isn’t it? How I don’t want ads on the site and I want to have a hand in making those obnoxious ads. I guess we all become the thing we want to avoid. I am Ultron’s little speech in Avengers: Age of Ultron talking about how men of peace often create tools of war. Only, you know, on a WAY smaller scale that doesn’t deal with life and death or existential crisis.
H: If you could offer any advice to others currently thinking about launching their own blog, what would you tell them?
J: My advice is just to work you ass off, really. Find one contact that will work with you for whatever you’re doing and run with it. For a long time, the only real press contacts we had were Colin of Nuance PR and Will/Chuck of Beartrap PR. Those two sources really helped not only keep us alive and posting/reviewing, but also helped to open the doors to other contacts. I was able to show work that I’ve done with bands that were starting to generate attention like The Hotelier and Somos. You’ll build relationships and will for sure be paranoid about sounding annoying, but annoying works as long as you believe in what you’re doing. Trust me, I’ve been there and still feel like I am here a lot of the time.
H: If bands and/or publicists want to work with you, how should they reach out?
J: The easiest way to get ahold of me is through email. I check my email religiously and I try and respond as soon as I have a free minute. I work the least punk job in the world right now that sucks me away from my phone/computer for a good 9 hours a day (not including my lunch, which usually includes feverish email checking.) You can find that just by clicking on the contact link in the sites navigation. If we like what you’re doing, you will definitely hear back.
H: That’s all I have right now. Do you have any final thoughts or comments to share before we finish?
J: Just a few quick things. The first is that I’d like to thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to talk about myself and what I do. It means a lot to see somebody believe in what I’m doing. The second has already been re-stated, but repetition leads to remembrance. We are looking for writers and interviewers. If you are interested in joining the team, you can shoot us an email with the subject “Writing for 36v” with a sample of your written work, and I will get back to you within 24 hours of getting that email.
That’s all, and thanks again!
H: Thanks for participating, Joel. Have a great week.
