Seattle’s Sound Magazine ^[1] is a monthly magazine that covers all aspects of the local music scene – from bar bands to national tours, without limiting their focus to a single genre or style. Executive Editor Jason Kirk was gracious enough to answer a few questions for me about the magazine and his views on our vibrant local music scene.

Please describe the background of Seattle Sound. Whose idea was it originally and who was involved in taking the idea from concept to reality? What was the span of time between “Hey, let’s make a magazine” and printing the first issue?

Sound was around before I came aboard, but my understanding is that the idea originated from the Mayor’s Office of Film and Music. They wanted something to help elevate and showcase Seattle’s music scene inside and outside the city. James Keblas, Director of the Mayor’s Office and Film and Music, found a kindred vision in James Baker, the publisher here at Media Index Publishing, who recruited a strong staff and launched Sound magazine. I believe the span from concept to page was about six months.

(more after the jump)

What do you consider the magazine’s reason for being? What can readers expect to find in Seattle Sound that they can’t find elsewhere? And why, in this blogging/MySpace/YouTube time, is the magazine in print form and not simply online?

The magazine’s reason for being and exclusive content both center on the variety of music we cover. Where else do the funk brothers of the Mackrosoft and Cheebacabra rub elbows with Barry Lieberman (bassist with the Seattle Symphony) and his American String Project? December’s issue boasts major features on both Neko Case, cryptic songstress extraordinaire, and Carl Tanner, who found his way to the international opera circuit after logging years as a trucker and a bounty hunter. The spice of life is our modus operandi, and it extends beyond music per se into aspects of the city’s culture that inform and are informed by music: fashion, leisure, nightlife, etc.

Why print? Well, we don’t see print or electronic formats as being mutually exclusive. From a reader’s standpoint, a magazine is portable, you have a unique tactile experience with it, it’s easier on the eyes, and it comes complete with that wonderful new-mag smell.

The November issue of Seattle Sound includes articles on Band of Horses, local radio DJs, and former pro snowboarder Blue Montgomery, as well as a piece on Mary Nam and raw food, along with the expected reviews and local listings. October had articles on Bob Dylan and Wynton Marsalis and September covered Seattle hip hop and Garfield HS’s contributions to music history. How do you determine what content you want for each issue? Do you have specific themes? How specific to the Seattle scene do your subjects need to be? Is a story about Bob Dylan really relevant to the idea of the “Seattle sound”?

Determining content here is a process. We fight, scratch, lose sleep, and eventually make up over what should see the page and what shouldn’t. I mentioned an eye toward variety earlier, but we’re also constantly trying to showcase what matters now, in the month a given issue covers. We’ve done one cover-to-cover theme issue (”The XX Issue,” July 2006), but generally, there’s not one guiding topical theme so much as a commitment to cover the most relevant musical and related happenings in town in a given month.

We branch out, too, casting our gaze up and down the Northwest for music that strikes us as worthy of further notice, but for the most part we stick to the immediate environs, people that live here or come to town to play here. Hence, Bob Dylan. His national resurgence this year (first #1 album in three decades) is news enough, but he’s also making that resurgence during a cultural moment that has parallels to the time in American history when Dylan first enjoyed the national limelight. Iraq is not Vietnam, but Dylan became an anti-war icon of sorts, decidedly against his will, during the Vietnam War, and he doesn’t want it to happen again. That’s a story, and it matters as much here as it does in any place where enough people care about Dylan’s music to fill an arena.

What do you see as the strengths of the local music scene? The weaknesses? What do you think the mainstream/non-local press gets right when it talks about Seattle and what do you think it gets wrong? What is the local press doing right and wrong?

Strengths: the people, the fact that Seattle’s small enough so that almost everybody in the music community can know almost everybody else by name, the musical and cultural history of the place, the generally admirable level of education among the musicians and listeners, the rabid fighters for all-ages music, the remarkable listener-supported radio communities of KBCS and KEXP, the number of neighborhoods sporting venues that book local musicians, the magnetism with which we attract national and international music, the competition between two local weeklies, the fact that the mayoral administration supports a film and music office!…

Weaknesses: I’d like to see more simultaneous, cross-genre fertilization. Plenty of music acts in town don’t fall easily into one or another genre, but we need more events that put vastly different music on the same stage on the same night. I have a skyscraping belief in the elasticity of listeners’ interest, and I hope that the variety and proximity of different kinds of music you’ll find in Sound will help goad more of the same.

What overlooked local artists/venues/scenes/genres do you think deserve more attention?

Tacket Brown is a local drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist par excellence. I think every venue in town worth trumpeting gets plenty of exposure. Scenes are a tough one. Frankly, I think scenes work against what I’m trying to get across in some of my answers above. Scenes are close communities, and as far as they bring people together, that’s good. But most scenes of any duration tend to begin defining themselves by what they are not, at which point their community-building benefits sharply decline. Genres work the same way, though in jazz and improvisational circles, the discussion about what is and what’s not is fertile and generative, whereas in other genres it tends to be exclusive, and therefore counterproductive.

What can we expect to read about in upcoming issues of Seattle Sound?

The January issue features the Shins, our Best of ‘06 picks, leggy British stage sensation Melanie Stace, and short pieces with Choklate, Math & Physics Club, and Bop Street Records’ owner Dave Voorhees. February will showcase Jesse Sykes, Gabriel Teodros, Andre Feriante, and a handful of dance-themed nightlife destinations on the Pike/Pine gauntlet.