livefreediyhard.com

Category: State of the Blog

  • 2025 Year in Review and Beyond

    2025 Year in Review and Beyond

    As of February of this year, I will have been writing some version of this blog for 2 years. When you count early iterations of Live Free DIY Hard then I have been doing this for nearly a year longer than that. Since I have chosen to focus on the blog, I have mainly written music reviews and 2025 was no different. This blog published 15 album reviews in 2025 and republished a few others. I also experimented here and there with other article formats, which I personally think turned out pretty good and were fun to write. However, the most notable thing to happen this year was transferring the blog from Substack to its own website. It certainly took quite a bit of time to accomplish, but I think this was important for staying as true to the DIY ethos of the blog as possible. On a personal note, my wife and I had a baby at the end of the year, so that was also a pretty big deal and rather cool, if you ask me.

    Enough talking about the past the true purpose of this post is to talk about what 2026 has in store. I would like to expand the blog some more. I plan to continue to write reviews but would also like to move into other kinds of content. What I have devised is a poll to get an idea of what readers might be interested in. So I present to y’all a menu of options that may peak your interest.

    Poll options

    1) long form articles at feature profiles/interviews of bands, DIY record labels and of DIY points of interest.

    2) Multi media content. LFDH was originally conceived as a weekly video show streamed on twitch. It functioned like that for about a year. While it is unlikely that particular format will ever make a return, some form of video or audio content could be possible if people are interested.

    3) Non-music related articles. I got stuff to say about a whole host of things so if there is interest in reading what I have to say about non-music related stuff, I would definitely look into writing about other topics. It would likely still be media criticism of some sort, but who knows.

    4) Just do more music reviews but maybe with more varied genres. If this is what y’all want, I am more than happy to keep giving it to y’all

  • Live Free DIY Hard: Year 1

    Live Free DIY Hard: Year 1

    While I started this here blog earlier this year, I have been doing Live Free DIY Hard in a live media format for over a year. In fact, March 29th marked the 1-year anniversary of the project. Since I started, I have done over 45+ live streamed shows. I honestly didn’t count so the exact number is anyone’s guess. I did roughly one a week only taking off a week here and there for important life events like my wedding anniversary and a few weeks for the birth of my last child. I have also done 7 video interviews, and 1 really wild marathon stream for the Anniversary of Radio 717 that ended up being around 12 hours long. All in all, it has been a year that didn’t play out the way I assumed it would. Deep down I figured that I would do my little hobby show and maybe someone would tune in once and a while and find a song or two that they like. Too a certain extent, that might still be true. What I didn’t account for is all the amazing people I have gotten to work with and know over the course of the year. Turns out the people that make DIY music are pretty cool.

    I would like to thank some of those people that really made this little project of mine worth doing. First, is Brian Walker of “A Day Without Love”. He reached out of me when I had maybe 2 or 3 shows under my belt and offered to be on my show. I hadn’t really even figured out what kind of show I was doing yet but was super stoked that a person whose music I enjoyed and respected was interested in being on it. I had thought that I might eventually reach out to interview musicians and what not. Getting to interview Brian kind of made it a “there is no better time than now” situation. In a way, that moment kind of steered the show in a really cool direction that might have otherwise taken me a substantially longer time to get to.

    Second, is Scott Brown of “The Ska Bees” who reached out to me after I mentioned I was looking for new music to feature on my show. Turns out he was releasing an EP for “The Ska Bees” and I was given the opportunity to do an album release interview. It is super cool and fun to play a small part in the launch of an album especially one as good as The Ska Bees EP. This was a steppingstone so to speak, that led to me doing more album release interviews for even more really cool bands including “Better, Or the Next Best Thing” by How I Became Invisible and “Just Devils” By PWRUP. The PWRUP interview is by far the most chaotically fun interview I have done thus far.   

                    Then there is Michi DiGiulio of “Mega Infinity” who reached out to me after I was trying to drum up some guests for the Radio 717 Anniversary Stream. They are a top-notch PR person. Who along with their husband Mike are infinitely patient. We did an interview for Mega Infinity’s Chaos Magic EP that I had to reschedule at least once and then on top of that we ended up having to film it twice because my goofy self messed up all their audio. The interview was me asking questions and then they would mime their answer. While hilarious in retrospect, it was a moment where I may have spiraled a little bit. In the end, we redid the interview and while I feel the one I ruined was probably better, I think it turned out pretty good.   

                    There are so many other people that I would love to thank but for brevity I will just say that every Band/Musician on this playlist has been a huge part of LFDH in a way that would make the project near impossible without them.

                    So, what’s next you may ask? To be honest I am not entirely sure. This has been somewhat of a fly by the seat of your pants type operation. I think that in a way that is what has made the project what it is; a nimble thing that is all about appreciating DIY music and the people who make it. Interviews have been on hiatus since the end of last year due to the birth of my son. I would love to get back to doing them sometime this year if possible. I really enjoy writing this blog so expect more album reviews shortly. As always, tune into my live show every Tuesday at 8pm east coast US time on Twitch. Hopefully the curated version of the show will eventually return, but until then we’re taking song requests and shuffling some great DIY music.

    This year in review was originally posted on April 15, 2024 on the former LFDH substack.