Hovering around the veggie-oil bus {thanks, Kari Altmann}

Being on the Round Robin tour of Baltimore performers is kind of like being a character from a TV sitcom. Sometimes you go places, and people know who you are and have a general idea of what to expect. If they’re at the show, it probably means they can at least stand your presence enough to put up with you for a few hours. Yet like customers at a mall with its anchor stores — JC Penney, Lord and Taylor, etc. — people aren’t necessarily coming out to witness every aspect, but they end up doing it anyway, and at times like it enough to buy your CD. And more and more people are coming out to see what this Baltimore thing is all about, i.e., the whole package, which is one of the best things about this tour.

It’s about Baltimore. It’s elevating the scene’s visibility beyond just focusing on a handful of the usual suspects, who of course assisted greatly in propelling us to this type of opportunity. But it’s great to see people spreading the love — for example, Height, who has been an up-and-coming Baltimore rapper for some time. This tour gives him the opportunity to play to a variety of audiences who may be turned on by the fact that he supplements his rap with twisted fragments of tribal percussion splattered over infectious minimal lyrics, sounding like haiku spoken over daydreams.

A lot of the performers, including myself, are used to playing in front of much more humble-sized audiences — say 10-18 people — usually standing with arms folded. Yet with draws of around 700 (the turnout at the Chicago show), people like Showbeast, performance artist/host of a children’s show, are interfacing with the same size crowd as The Death Set (who, by the way, have been hauling gear and working the dreaded merch table along with the rest of the Round Robin community). And that is cool on a few levels. First, you are showing crowds this other weird thing happening in Baltimore that they may have never known about. The other positive result is these guys being able to move their merchandise, which normally sits in their rooms for about a year because of not having broad access to possible fans. Selling your 200 CD-R’s doesn’t equate to big bucks, especially when you give a bunch away, but it’s enough to help bands like my Wham City dawgs The Santa Dads or breakbeat/electronic act Smart Growth to put out a new album or boost their gig profile, which helps to keep the heat on.

We may not be representing every square inch of the scene, which would probably take a few more buses, but I feel like this tour is a huge step in the right direction.

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