ENTERTAINMENT

MyCJ sponsors indie panel at Hub City Music Fest

"How Indie Artists Can Flourish in Digital Age" features experts Keith Roth, Sirius XM; Maria Ferrero. Adrenaline PR; Joe Steinhardt, Don Giovanni Records & Mike Mike Mehalick, Speak into My Good Eye

Staff Report
@MyCentralJersey
  • "How Indie Artists Can Flourish in Digital Age" will be 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 16 at Court Tavern
  • The indie music panel is part of the Hub Music Festival, which raises money for Elijah's Promise
  • Panel will be followed by concert featuring five of the best bands from New Brunswick & Asbury Park
  • Hub City Music Festival will kick off on April 14 and continue to April 24 throughout New Brunswick

If you’re an independent or unsigned music artist tired of giving your songs away in order for people to hear it on streaming services, and watching it on YouTube, come to an indie music panel at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 16, at the Court Tavern, 124 Church St., New Brunswick.

The fourth annual Hub City Music Festival will include an indie music panel organized by Makin Waves columnist Bob Makin. "How Indie Artists Can Flourish in the Digital Age” will feature Keith Roth of Sirius XM, Maria Ferrero of Adrenaline PR, and Joe Steinhardt of Don Giovanni Records.

The panel is part of the two week-long Hub City Music Festival presented in partnership by the NewBrunswick Cultural Center and Iguana Music. The festival is directed annually by Michael Steinbruck to benefit the New Brunswick-based Elijah’s Promise food empowerment program.

Four music industry experts will gather to share their knowledge and experience with local artists. “How Indie Artists Can Flourish in the Digital Age” will feature:

The panel has been organized and will be moderated by Bob Makin, a veteran New Jersey entertainment writer whose Makin Waves and Makin Plans columns appear weekly throughout Gannett NJ and the USA TODAY NETWORK. Panelists will share how independent artists can make a better living with their music through touring, publishing, trustworthy management, and effective marketing, promotion and distribution, all while maintaining their independence and artistic control. To that end, Makin has produced an Indie Music Resource Guide filled with venues, events, promoters, publicists, publications, radio stations, distributors, and more.

“In addition to navigating independent record sales in the face of music and video streams, illegal downloads, and the impact of both on royalties, we will discuss the tried-and-true career trajectories of incessant touring and trustworthy management with good leverage,” Makin said. “Our panelists’ first-hand knowledge will help indie acts overcome frustrating obstacles at a time when the local music scene and music industry offer plenty of opportunities if you know where to find them.”

The Roadside Graves perform on the basement stage of the Court Tavern in New Brunswick, where they'll return April 16 during the Hub City Music Festival.

The panel will be followed by a concert featuring five of the internationally recognized New Brunswick and Asbury Park music scenes’ best independent bands:

  • Cold Weather Company, a harmonic alternative-folk trio that is readying its second self-released full-length album between tours
  • The Vaughns, a female-fronted rock band with two well-received EPs
  • The Roadside Graves, a Don Giovanni recording act that has developed a strong regional following
  • Battery Electric, acclaimed Asbury-based garage rock that has recorded two albums for that city’s Little Dickman Records
  • Professor Caveman, an eclectic Hub City outfit that combines funkadelic Latin grooves with punk-tinged surf rock.

During the past three years, the Hub City Music Festival has raised nearly $15,000 for Elijah’s Promise, which empowers the hungry and homeless with a soup kitchen, where they can get fed; a culinary school, where they can learn, and a catering/restaurant business, where they can work. The fourth annual fest will run from April 14 to 17 and April 21 to 24 throughout New Brunswick and at Pino’s in Highland Park.

For more about the festival info, visit https://www.facebook.com/hubcitymusicfestival/.

More about the panelists

Keith Roth of SiriusXM, "Electric Ballroom," Main Man Records, Electric Frankenstein, and "Let Me Down Hard."

Roth is a host of Sirius XM’s “Ozzy’s Boneyard” and “Hair Nation” satellite radio programs and producer of rock icon David Johansen’s “Mansion of Fun.” Roth also is co-creator and host of “Electric Ballroom,” a rock specialty show that has aired on 95.9 the Rat since 1998 with guests, such as The Clash’s Joe Strummer, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Queen’s Brian May, The Who’s John Entwistle, and Alice Cooper. When not on radio, Roth works with Red Bank-based Main Man Records, whose 50 records include releases by Daniel Ash of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets fame, and Frankenstein 3000, Roth’s own band. Roth also recorded and/or toured with Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls, as well as members of The Ramones, Skid Row, The Runaways, The Damned, Bon Jovi and Skid Row. Most recently, he has starred in the acclaimed new film, “Let Me Down Hard,” about a musician who returns home to New Jersey to stage a professional and personal comeback.

"Metal" Maria Ferrero, Metallica's first publicist  for Megaforce Records when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thrash metal act was living in  Old Bridge between 1983 and 1984. She owns Adrenaline PR and is a partner in Breaking Bands management.

Ferrero is the original publicist for Metallica, Anthrax, Testament, Overkill, and many other acts on Megaforce Records, a label with which she was associated from its launch in 1983. Following the sale of Megaforce, Ferrero launched Adrenaline PR in 2003. Her own boutique marketing, public relations and branding firm brings to fruition 32 years of Ferrero’s experience also working with the Alternative Press Music Awards, Five Finger Death Punch, GWAR, Hatebreed, Warren Haynes, Lamb of God, Ministry, MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball Tour, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, Nuclear Blast Music, Rock Star Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, Sevendust, Suicidal Tendencies, Hank Williams III and many more. Recently, Ferrero reteamed with Megaforce Records founders Jon and Marsha Zazula and Megaforce recording artist Chuck Billy of Testament to form Breaking Bands, a management company that represents the Oakland-based alternative-pop outfit Forrest Day, Victory Records act Shattered Sun, the Swedish metal band Soilwork, Night Flight Orchestra, a classic rock band also from Sweden, and the New Jersey holiday prog-rock ensemble The Wizards of Winter.

The independent label Don Giovanni Records is based in New Brunswick.

Steinhardt is the founder of New Brunswick-based Don Giovanni Records, home to the city’s latest national act, Screaming Females, whose guitarist, Marissa Paternoster, recently was voted by Spin magazine as the 77th greatest guitarist of all time. Like Screaming Females, many of the acts Steinhardt has signed since the label’s 2003 formation have come up through the internationally recognized New Brunswick basement music scene. He showcases his artists annually in New Brunswick and New York City, frequently at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and now at the New Alternative Music Festival coming in September to Asbury Park. Don Giovanni often focuses on female-fronted acts and LGBT artists in order to give them a stronger voice. The roster also includes Waxahatchee, Priests, Laura Stevenson, Downtown Boys, The Roadside Graves, and Lifetime frontman Ari Katz’s project Mitylion. Steinhardt also holds a doctorate in communication from Cornell University and will be teaching the subject at Michigan State University in the fall.

Mike Mehalick is the co-founding editor-in-chief of the award-winning Speak into My Good Eye online indie music publication and a music management consultant.

Mehalick is co-founding and editor-in-chief of the NY/NJ-based indie music site "Speak Into My Good Eye." Born out of a mutual passion for music and writing, Mehalick and fellow co-founder, Chris Rotolo, continued to grow the vision of the online hub to include booking live showcases, running a 24-hour songwriting challenge for charity and other creative enterprises that have offered new avenues of exposure for local, emerging artists.Since forming, "Speak Into My Good Eye" has enjoyed various successes, including several Asbury Music Awards, becoming a part of the Hype Machine network, and hosting/booking an official CMJ 2015 showcase in Brooklyn. Mehalick also regularly contributes to "The Line of Best Fit," "Diffuser" and "Groundsounds" with past credits including " BuzzFeed," "The Huffington Post," "Elmore Magazine" and "Spinner." He's covered a litany of music festivals, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, SXSW, Firefly and more. Mehalick also works as a freelance project manager for several bands, achieving significant exposure and response from new fans and industry professionals for each.

Makin has been a New Jersey music writer for 36 years with the Asbury Park Press, East Coast Rocker, The Aquarian Weekly, Backstreets, Details, Courier News, Jambands.com, Relix, Home News Tribune, MyCentralJersey.com, Gannett NJ and USA TODAY NETWORK. His interviews have included Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osborne, Bradley Nowell of Sublime, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Glenn Danzig, Taking Back Sunday, Phish, the Allman Brothers Band, members of the Grateful Dead, and hundreds of local acts featured in his Makin Waves column for 18 years. His writing has won nine New Jersey Press Association Awards and has co-won four Best of Gannett Awards. Makin was co-founding volunteer director of Jersey Jams Fund, which raised $100,000 for music education from 2001 to 2005.

For more about the indie music panel, contact Makin at 732-565-7319 or bmakin@gannettnj.com.