Know Your Blog [Hilly Town Edition]

If there's one thing we love more than bacon on the NXT Desk, it's local blogs. But for the longest time we've struggled on how to incorporate them better around here. Many of you probably notice that when I'm away from the desk or otherwise incapacitated I try to get local bloggers to keep the shop running.

But I think we need something on a more regular basis, and until we get together an NXT blogroll (the page may not be able to handle any more heft), I'm introducing "Know Your Blog," a new feature where we'll spotlight local bloggers on a regular basis. If you've got or know of a great local blog, e-mail me or find me on Twitter with your ideas.

This week's Know Your Blog: Hilly Town

I discovered Hilly Town last year after exchanging a few e-mails with Brian Bruchman, who had recently moved to the Portland area. You may know some of his previous work as one of the co-creators of the blog Ruined Music. Since starting up Hilly Town last summer Bryan's started up Hilly Town Presents, a concert series, and co-organized the Portland Pins project.

Q: Tell us about yourself

My name is Bryan Bruchman and I'm a photographer and web designer from NJ - BryanBruchman.com is my photo site. I moved to Portland last summer after spending ten years in NYC. I also work events at SPACE Gallery and help out with their blog HaveFaithInWorthlessKnowledge.com.

Q: What made you want to start Hilly Town?

I was trying to learn about the local music scene before moving to Portland but had a hard time finding one place that could provide info on the kinds of events - mostly indie/experimental rock - I was looking for. In NYC I was used to having a number of options for entertainment listings sources - there's one tailored precisely to everybody's taste there, but in Portland there are far fewer resources. When I got here, I would take every flyer I saw and write down the info from posters around town and then put them all together in the show list on the site. I noticed that there were a lot of concerts that the other outlets (the Bollard, the Phoenix, Maine Today, etc.) were missing, so I worked to keep on top of those things - especially smaller/diy/last minute shows - so that word could get out about them and get more people checking out the local music scene. It was about half for my own desire to discover what was going on and half to share it with other people - since I was already collecting the information anyway. Blogging on the site came later, as I started seeing everything going on in the Portland scene and getting excited about it. These days it's become another outlet for my concert and event photography.

Q: What about that name?

"A Hilly Town" was a Ponys/Phantom Buffalo single. It was the first song from a band in Maine that I got into, thanks to my girlfriend, Mary (a Maine native). In December 2007, 6 months before I moved to Maine, I had Phantom Buffalo come down to the Knitting Factory to play a show that I set up and it was a really great time.

Q: How much work goes into the site?

I don't have a rigid schedule for updating the site, though I do a weekly roundup on Fridays and I try to update the concert listings for the next two weeks by Tuesday morning - DJ Roy on WMPG (Liberation By Sound) does a HillyTown.com concert calendar update on his show every Tuesday at 4pm, so I want to make sure it's all as up-to-date as possible by then. There are usually two or three other items per week that I end up posting as blog entries - from concert photos and community events to news about bands or, now, cookie reviews from HillyTown contributor Biscuit Wakefield. Between emails, listings, blog posts, and photos, work for the site probably takes an average of 5 hours a week. If I could afford to spend more time on it I would!

Q: How do you try to attract readers?

I still haven't done much promotion just for the site in the form of advertising or anything - though I've made buttons with the logo on it and given them out at concerts, and the HillyTown name has gotten out there in part through other projects that I've been involved in - most recently the Portland Pins Project, which is a collaborative local art project organized by myself and Kris Johnsen of Emblem Studio. The HillyTown Presents concert series also helps to spread the word - the url and name go on the posters, flyers, and web promotion for the events, and that seems to be working.

Q: Do you have a background in music?

I've been playing guitar in bands since high school. In NY I was in a band called Man In Gray for about 7 years, and now here in Portland I play with the group Marie Stella. There's also DraculaZombieUSA, but my involvement in that has more to do with jumping around and yelling than any musical skill (the ipod and rhythm section take care of that). I've been around the music industry as well for a while now, from music blogging and concert promotion to working at venues, at CMJ, and as a photographer for various blogs and magazines.

Q: How difficult is getting listings info?

It's really difficult! For the first few months I made sure to tell every musician I met to make sure to send me their concert listings at hello@hillytown.com, and most still don't. There are a few who are great and make sure to update me with every show and detail change that comes up, and that's exactly what I want! If the time changes or a band is added or anything happens that affects the listing for a concert, I want to know about it and let my readers know. A few venues are good about sending out press releases or calendar updates, but most of my listings come from digging around on bands' Myspace pages, venue sites, and things like Pollstar and Ticketweb. And of course flyers that I'm given or poster I see around town.

Q: How did Hilly Town Presents start?

Booking shows can be a lot of fun, especially when you don't have to do it all the time, so it can feel like a special event. I'd done quite a few events through my other website, Subinev.com, and been involved with a blogger collective called After The Jump which organizes an annual festival and showcases at CMJ, South By Southwest, and more. Once I started to see how much great music Portland had to offer, I wanted to come up with ways to both get those acts some more/different exposure and also find a way to attract touring bands to come to Portland, especially when it wasn't normally a stop on their tours. So far it's been working out great, and I've done shows at a lot of venues in town, with some of the out-of-town bands (most are those I knew from Brooklyn) really falling in love with Portland and wanting to come back again and again.

Q: What's the most fun part of the blog? Is there a least fun part?

It's all fun right now. Sometimes the process of hunting down the details of a show can be frustrating, but that's hardly a big deal. It's always great to write about something on the site and then go out and run into people who have read it and been inspired or been turned onto something they didn't know about before. I really enjoy things like the Tower Of Song Festival portraits that I did, where I helped give their event a little extra promotion and also got to interact with a lot of great musicians by doing photos of them in the weeks leading up to the festival. I'd say to expect more special features like that on the site - as opposed to record reviews or anything like that.

Q: What's your hope for the future of Hilly Town?

I hope I can keep going with it and improve it. I have more projects in the works between things like HillyTown Presents, Portland Pins, and more, that I'm excited about. The site will also continue to grow, with some big changes likely down the road a bit. There are definitely some technical and aesthetic improvements that I hope to get around to soon. With the site coming up on its first birthday (July 29) there will be some festivities (in August, to be announced soon!). I've noticed more and more blogs - specifically music blogs - starting up in the area, and it's great. I'm interested in seeing what becomes of this newly developing community and how it affects the music and arts scene in Portland!