If you’re just finding out about Groove Café from the Hurricane Maria benefit compilation Aftermaths, you might be kinda curious about what this whole thing is.
Simply, Groove Café is an online project dedicated to supporting the community aspect of underground music, and helping underground music scenes get involved with community causes.
As far as supporting the community aspect, if you click around here you’ll find guides for mental health and safety in DIY, a growing database of female spectrum sound engineers, video documentation of performance from around the country, and a Chicago show calendar. The idea here is to build needed resources that can live on the internet and be helpful for a long time. If you have any ideas for resources, please get in touch using the contact form.
And as far as benefitting communities, well, I’m trying to figure it out. One proven way of supporting community causes is using music to raise money for them. Aftermaths is the first release on the Groove Café label. Like Aftermaths, every release will be raising money for a specific organization doing crucial work.
Groove Café will always be candid about the finances in an effort to encourage the idea that this website is really just a facilitator for community efforts. The project a little different than a conventional music publication or label, so it will take a second to figure everything out and make it perfect. Therefore, please always feel free to get in touch with feedback.
On a last note, this is kind of a second launch for Groove Café. I lost some steam and dropped some balls after getting a concussion a few months back. Originally this site was conceived as a more of a publication that focused on live music instead of recorded music, but it’s looking like it will serve a slightly different purpose moving forward.
—Host