Since its founding, in 2010, the Windsor-based music cooperative What Doth Life has been a scrappy, shoestring outfit. With little more than know-how and perseverance, the collective’s musicians have recorded a slew of albums and played dozens and dozens of shows.
The latest example of this character trait is also a bid toward greater stability and influence that’s already bearing fruit. There are more shows by local bands, and What Doth Life last week released the largest compilation record it’s ever produced, a benefit for the ACLU of Vermont.
“It’s been a busy last couple of weeks,” Brendan Dangelo, one of the musician-organizers behind What Doth Life, said in a phone interview. “I’ve played a show every weekend,” and he’ll play another on Saturday with The Pilgrims at Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover.
After last September’s What Doth Rumble, a two-day festival featuring more than 30 bands at the Main Street Museum, the collective found that it had money left over. It wasn’t a huge sum, around $2,000, but it was enough to put into organizing more shows and making sure bands got paid for them.
To fund the Rumble, the WDL organizers raised donations through the Main Street Museum, a nonprofit. Dangelo and Joie Finley, a former longtime volunteer at the museum, realized the music collective could fund more opportunities for up-and-coming bands if it incorporated as a nonprofit. Finley did the paperwork and What Doth Life announced last month that it is now a 501(c)(3) organization.
There isn’t likely to be much outward change, except that What Doth Life members plan to maintain their current level of activity.
“The nonprofit gives us a little more structure,” Dangelo said. Its seven-member board, which consists of six local musicians who have recorded with and played shows through What Doth Life, and Finley, the only non-musician, will be able to deliberate a bit more thoughtfully on the collective’s plans.
“The nonprofit lets us think about how we can build on stuff that we’ve done,” Dangelo said.
It’s also a reminder that this rock’n’roll outfit is run by grownups with day jobs and children and roles in their community. Dangelo is on the Windsor Planning Commission and Davis McGraw, another board member, is on the Mount Ascutney School Board.
As the Upper Valley’s arts infrastructure has grown over the past three decades, bands recording and playing live music have been an outlier. The landscape of small venues is broad, but the funding is not deep.
That’s beginning to change a bit, even as music venues are undergoing a period of crisis elsewhere.
Phish’s WaterWheel Foundation makes grants to Vermont nonprofits, Finley said, and a new nonprofit, the Massachusetts-based Audeville Society, made a grant to support the Rumble last year.
What Doth Life is working on a presentation to take to donors, Finley said. Funding will go toward what the collective has always done, help bands make, record and perform new music.
“There is a gap and we’re hoping to fill it,” Finley said.
Beyond that, What Doth Life is considering other initiatives. It won’t hold a Rumble this year, Dangelo said, but might hold classes or workshops musicians can take and will look into development of a dedicated practice space. And there will probably be a musical showcase sometime in September or October, but not on the scale of the Rumble, he said.
The most recent project is “Solidarity,” the compilation album to support the ACLU. Released last week, it’s available on Bandcamp, a music-sharing website. The best way to access it is to donate to the ACLU of Vermont in any amount, then email a photo of your receipt to info@whatdothlife.com to get and access code to the recording on Bandcamp, Kiel Alarcon, who spearheaded the project, said.
He came up with the idea in February, when Minneapolis was teeming with ICE officers. At the same time, Chodus, the Claremont-based What Doth Life band, came out with a song titled “Ash,” a brief, incendiary protest anthem.
“Searching around for other music, I just noticed people were making protest-y” songs, Alarcon said.
He put out a call to musicians and received 32 submissions, many from bands he’d never heard of. “I listened to them all and they all ended up on there,” Alarcon said.
“Solidarity” ranges across the genre landscape, from punk to blues, folk, ska and straight-up rock.
Multiple What Doth Life bands contributed, include The Pilgrims, who headline a show Saturday night at Sawtooth Kitchen. Joining them are the South Royalton band Bull & Prairie and OWL, a relatively new band out of Windsor.
With more activity from local bands, the Upper Valley appears to be bucking a trend that has seen multiple music venues close or struggle in the Burlington area, including such storied outposts as Nectar’s and Radio Bean. On the other hand, beyond the Main Street Museum, the Upper Valley has few music venues durable enough to call “storied.”
The best way to follow the new nonprofit’s shows and recordings, Dangelo said, is to keep an eye on whatdothlife.com.
Books
Congratulations to Corinth-based writer Sasha Hom on winning a Vermont Book Award for fiction for her debut novella,”Sidework.” Her publisher, Black Lawrence Press, says “Sidework” is “about a homeless Korean adoptee and mother of four.” Set in northern California, it takes place during the protagonist’s Sunday shift waiting tables at a cafe tucked away in the redwoods. Hom is herself a Korean adoptee. The book awards were presented in a ceremony on Saturday in Montpelier.
