What is the Queen City Sound? In other words, for those of you who don't live here in my community, what does Burlington, Vermont sound like? Our friend and filmmaker Kieran Delaney is investigating this question in a documentary he's working on, Queen City Sound, scheduled to be finished in June. He asked some musicians, journalists and enthusiasts in town to sit in front of the camera and tell him what they think.

The music in this town is a big part of why I live here. Not only does the local community produce a top notch wide array of music, but we can also bring all different types of touring acts here and it works. It's worth stopping here on tour. And a lot of times, we leave the impression that it's worth coming back. We have it good. I'm continuously amazed at how well live music does here, especially the diversity--everything from hip-hop to punk shows work, and we have a successful jazz festival every year. Right around the corner from where I live is the Radio Bean, and any given night I can walk in there and hear something incredible. One night you have great honky tonk music, the next could be blissed-out free jazz and the next night experimental noise/drone could have the entire room captivated. There are always people listening. It's a big part of the reason five years ago we thought, "I think we can launch a music magazine out of this town. There's an infrastructure here to support to it."

Below is the trailer for the documentary. From State of Mind, Matt Bushlow and I were interviewed. It was great to talk about the music scene here. I mentioned in the interview that I recently had a conversation with my college roommate about Burlington. Since we left school in Syracuse, N.Y. over ten years ago, he's lived in Tucson, Washington D.C., and St. Louis. He's experienced the music scenes in those cities and still feels that Burlington has something better. The thing he said that really resonated with me was that he thought that per capita Burlington has the best music scene in the country. I agree. Hey, we're not New York City, but shit, we're also not New York City.

Queen City Sound /// Official Trailer from Backspace Pictures on Vimeo.