Resound Music Magazine will host a launch party Friday, Sept. 4 at the Jones House Community Center. The event will host performances by local musicians Kate Rhudy, Bootstrap Slick, Ross Joyner and Arson Daily.
Resound Magazine is a national online publication dedicated to college music scenes, with branches located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke, University of Colorado Boulder and Appalachian State University. Boone’s Resound was started by Kendall Atwater, a junior commercial photography major.
“I went to a Kings of Leon concert in Raleigh, and I saw the photographers up front and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be doing,’ and wondered what I needed to do to go to shows for free and be standing on the front row,” Atwater said.
Atwater said she searched for internship opportunities to start doing what she loved, and was pointed to Resound Magazine. The different branches on college campuses are completely student run.
Atwater contacted the Resound branch in Chapel Hill and started speaking with different music and writing classes at Appalachian. In September 2014, around twenty people showed up to the first interest meeting, and those involved started attending shows and interviewing bands.
“I have a lot of passions, and this is why I love this school. I think Appalachian really supports and thrives with artists and creators,” Atwater said. “I love that this was just about music. I think it’s cool [Resound] can bring awareness about local musicians to students around Appalachian.”
One year later, Resound is hosting its launch party in hopes of recruiting more people to help promote Boone’s local music scene.
“We are really hoping that at the launch party we can recruit new members who like all different kinds of media and will be dedicated to using that to tell stories about the shows,” Atwater said. “We really want people to know about what we are doing and we want them to know that we are here to help the local music scene.”
The party will hosts performers of different genres of music to help create diversity, Atwater said.
Kate Rhudy, a junior music industry major, will be bringing her “sad river folk music” to the launch party, she said. Like most of the performers, Rhudy met Atwater through school and asked her to play at this event.
“I think Resound is awesome,” Rhudy said. “I think it’s been a huge success at other campuses, so it’s really cool Kendall took the initiative to start the club here. There’s not anything else that does what it does.”
Alternative rock group and Battle of the Bands winner Arson Daily will also play at Resound’s launch party. Since winning the Battle of the Bands at Legends, the band has been playing a lot of shows around the area and is currently working on writing new music.
Arson Daily learned about Resound through Atwater. The band’s bass player, junior Quincy Platt, started writing for the magazine.
“I think it’s great,” Platt said. “I like that it’s inclusive to [Boone] and I like the idea that we’re a part of that.”
Story by: Molly Flinchum
Photos courtesy of: Kendall Atwater
