Route 66 Challenge Story
Burlingame, CA. – July 15th, 2014 – They’re calling it the world’s first linear music festival. It’s a brand new concept. It runs the entire length of Route 66, from Chicago to L.A., and it lasts for two solid weeks, July 25 to August 9. Bands and performers in venues in cities and towns all along Route 66 can sign up at the Rifftime website (www.route66.rifftime.com) to participate. It is absolutely free. Once they’re signed on they can live stream their performance, and post pictures and stories for the world to see. Any band, any genre, any style. All the live music and fans and bloggers along the length of Route 66 together in one digital space. It’s a brand new idea. It’s exciting.
It is the brainchild of Bruce Forman, guitar player of Cow Bop. They’re an L.A. band that plays a brilliant blend of bebopping western swing. And they do this crazy thing started with what he called the Route 66 Challenge. “We started out in Chicago with a hundred bucks in our pockets and played our way back home on Route 66. Nothing scheduled, nothing planned. We’d pick up gigs where we could, in bars, or busking on street corners. We played in people’s living rooms or in the park, for the door, or for dinner, or for gas money…for change dropped in the hat.” They headed west, meeting people, and got a good look at the country. They played till 2,451 miles later they’d do one last gig on the Santa Monica Pier. They did it a few times.
Forman first explained this all to me several years ago. I didn’t understand it at first. It was the craziest stunt I’d ever heard of in all my years writing for the LA Weekly. I didn’t get the angle, the publicity value. “There is no angle,” he said. “We just do it because it’s romantic. It’s Route 66, straight through the heart of America.”
A few years later he looks back on that first Route 66 Challenge and sees something a little deeper. “It was just a crazy trek to find America, really. I needed to get out of the recording studios and out of the night clubs and the fancy sessions. Get away from the classroom. Get back to where the music began.” Forman, always in-demand as a session guitarist, was looking for something that connected him back with his Texas roots. Cow Bop is just that–Dizzy Gillespie meeting Bob Wills in a dance hall. People go nuts for the stuff. They tore it up at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and had them dancing at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. They’ve made fans in little juke joints and honky tonks and halls the length of Route 66. “We even had the hipsters dancing on the Santa Monica Pier”.
After a few trips it began to occur to him that they were seeing a part of America he’d thought was going away. “But it was very much alive, just challenged, like everybody else. I saw that the problem wasn’t that the music was disappearing, but there was no way for us musicians to let the world know we are still out there. Record companies aren’t interested. Radio doesn’t take much notice. The big music press has no idea or doesn’t care that most of us exist. There has to be a way of getting everyone together somehow in one place so that the world knows what we do. So people can hear us. Watch our gigs. Interact with fans from all over. Get bloggers involved. There must be a way to democratize and energize the music community.”
You mean like at a festival? Like SXSW?
“Exactly! But instead of everyone heading to Austin to play, everyone plays their own gigs at venues up and down Route 66, and are linked together digitally. Old school gigging and touring that utilizes the new technologies. I call it a linear festival.”
And that’s where Rifftime comes in. They’re supplying—for free—the digital space that connects all the venues and bands and fans. “Even the people riding down Route 66 on their Harleys can follow the festival on their iPads. They’ll be able to a check out a gig along the road, and check out another band half the country away.”
For Cow Bop it’s another Route 66 Challenge. They kick off in Chicago on July 25, playing at Logan Square Studio, and at the Jazz Hall of Fame in Tulsa on July 31. They wind up on August 9 at Viva Cantina in Burbank. In between they have a number of other gigs and will wing the rest. “It’s a different story every time. The Challenge is kind of like the great migration on Route 66, hitting the road not knowing what you’ll find. And you will see it all on Rifftime as it happens.”
Forman sees the Rifftime Linear Music Festival as really something revolutionary. “As it is now we are letting the future of music down. It’s hard to connect the audience with the music that they want to see. It’s hard to find venues, hard to sell the music, hard to tour, hard to connect with writers and bloggers even. But if we’re creative we can find new ways of keeping this American music legacy alive. And this Rifftime linear festival, crazy as it might seem at first to some people, is a big step in the right direction.” The asphalt highway meets the digital highway. Get your kicks on Route 66.
About Rifftime Music
Rifftime is a social and melodic experience for the musician in us all. From the aspiring performing student, to the sophisticated listener/fan, to the mature touring professional, Rifftime has something for everyone. With the highest compensation rate in the industry, artists can create and sell their own, quality music products. Rifftime supplies the production resources artists require to build a world-class presence. Fans are provided “backstage” pass access to their favorite artists through lessons, videos, songs, photos, touring information and more.
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About Fanfare Entertainment, LLC
Fanfare Entertainment is a privately funded company based in Burlingame, California. The company focuses on delivering mobile experiences that engage and monetize fans and consumers in music, sports, entertainment, consumer products and other brand-intensive industries. Fanfare brings new revenue streams to brands, artists, and musicians through its unique mobile apps, and through Rifftime, the extraordinary musician showcase and innovative record label of the future targeting veteran and amateur artists alike. To learn more, visit http://www.fanfareentertainment.com.