After no less than 5 years of dreaming, 1 year of serious brainstorming, and now months of insomnia-inducing making-it-really-happen work, I'm so excited to finally launch LIVE LETTERS. I spent years in Minneapolis concert-hopping and documenting shows for HowWasTheShow, bands, and myself. Then I moved to Tacoma and still shot a handful of concerts, but I could definitely feel that I wasn't as invested then. I didn't know why until I moved back to Minneapolis and felt the overwhelming need to jump back in. It just makes sense. It's Minneapolis. This city, and this music, is where my heart lies.
LIVE LETTERS is here to document the amazing live music that's happening in this lovely city, and occasionally elsewhere. As a photographer the art of creating compelling images is as important to me as solely documenting the show, so I'm more than excited to be able to showcase some incredible photographers, videographers, and audio magicians from all around, including the wonderful Jenn Barnett who has jumped on board with full force and is going to be an incredible part of this entire LIVE LETTERS project.
Also part of this crew is Steve Korf, who has been part of this conversation from day 1, and has also been recording audio of live shows for years. His archive is RIDICULOUS and hopefully we'll be able to convince him to share large chunks of it, as well as document new shows (the audio that he's already shared of Chris Koza's show at the MIA is one of my favorites). Steve's been my music counterpart since we met and there's no way I'd even think about doing a project like this without having him be involved. Almost 10 years ago he called me up and said "hey, I'm thinking of driving down to New Orleans. Tonight. Dave Pirner's playing a show this weekend; you in?" I was in Duluth, he was in Fargo, we met in the middle with our friend Matt and made the journey. Safe to say // we love live music.
There are more aspects of this project that will be announced in the coming weeks (or hours). I couldn't be more excited about them, in many ways they're the heart of what LIVE LETTERS is all about, and I can't wait to share them with you all. For now, I'll just highly suggest that you keep the evening of June 14th free (if you want to be the first to know about events + news, sign up on the right hand side). Until then we would love it if you would jump through the archives of our live letters and relive the shows that we love.
Millions of thanks to Jenn, Steve, David, Greg, Urban Bean, Kasia, Josh, Eliesa, Gabe, Chris, John, and everyone else that's been both sounding boards and active parts of this little project.
I can't think of a better way to celebrate my 29th birthday.
xoxo, Sara