A Blog's Life
Columbus ex-pat Robert Duffy celebrates seven years of Donewaiting.com
By Adam Scoppa |
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Columbus might have lost Robert Duffy to a worthy career opportunity in New York City, but his Columbus-culture-centered website is still going strong. On Donewaiting.com, over 5,000 registered users dish about current events, politics, booze, and most of all, music. I caught up with the 33-year-old mogul from his new gig at the American Museum of Natural History to discuss seven years in the local scene.
www.donewaiting.com
What inspired the site seven years ago?
I lived in Columbus for about eight and half years. When I first started the site, I really hadn't been thinking too much about Columbus music. It was going to be a music blog about bands that I liked - Wilco, Belle and Sebastian, things like that. But around the same time that I was thinking of starting the site, I finally started to see some of the local bands in town, and I really fell in love with the whole scene. Donewaiting.com became a site that talked about the national music scene, but we also wanted to bring in some of the local flavors, so that people knew that it was a website from Columbus, Ohio.
What does the site's name mean?
I had an idea for a site for someone else to make, and no one made it, and I was done waiting for someone else. (laughs)
How have you noticed the Columbus scene developing over the last decade?
I think, like everyone, we've seen the Internet become a great tool for bands to get their music out. I think that's been a blessing and a curse; on one hand, anyone can access the Internet and find your music, but the opposite side of that coin is now there are so many bands vying for people's attention. What's been interesting to me is to see [which] bands have been able to make it work on the web. Not every band has the luxury of touring and getting out there, so what other things can people do to help get the word out, like using websites and posting music up for free. That's been the biggest thing for me: What are people doing and are they doing it effectively?
As the most popular blog for Columbus music, do you feel Donewaiting.com fulfills its role in bringing the music community together?
We try to. The site's always been more than just me. We've always had a lot of different writers who come and go, and over the past two years or so we've had some unique writers who definitely have certain kinds of music that they're into. The site's no one's full time job. It's just kind of a labor of love and we update it when we can. And when it becomes that, it's tough to shine a light on everyone, and we just tend to gravitate towards writing about the bands we like because we want to support them and really that's all we have the time for.
You live in Brooklyn now. Does Columbus hold its own against the multitude of acts emerging from there?
I think there's just as much talent in Columbus [as] here, but what these cities have that Columbus doesn't is the national media. Any band in Columbus is as good as the bands in Brooklyn, but the thing about the bands in Brooklyn is that all the media's here. They might have a show where a guy who works for NPR is in the audience, or they go to a party and they meet a writer for Pitchfork.com or a writer from Spin. It's all these casual contacts and these casual conversations that propel these bands easier and faster. I'm trying to slowly integrate myself into the scene. My plan is to start hosting Brooklyn Donewaiting shows that we'll invite some Columbus bands to come out and play. That's what I hope [will] happen next year.
Originally Published: March 1, 2010
