When I moved to Columbia in 2002 it was always a goal for one of my new bands to play the Free Times Music Crawl. Afterall, it showcases tons of local talent and is a signifier of what is “in” in the music scene. The first couple of years my bands didn’t get in, and although I think we applied nearly five times, we never made the cut. I’d like to say that didn’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but it did. But even though I was always a little bitter, going to Music Crawl and enjoying all of the amazing acts made me realize that maybe we needed to work on our music a little bit harder to make the cut. Years later, one of my bands did make it in and it was worth it in different ways than I expected. I wouldn’t say we made a lot of new fans, but we did perform for a great crowd. The best part ended up being that I got to meet a ton of new people in other bands through this event. 

In 2012 Free Times Music Crawl was one of the best ever (every year seemed like that). Little did we know then that it would be the last one for a while. In the opening line of their article Free Times wrote “Columbia deserves a Music Crawl” and that couldn’t be more true. Just looking at this years lineup, and talking about it before hand made everyone realize the amount of talent we have here, and that all that talent in one place on one night is a signifier of the strength of our music scene. So mark Nov 10 on your calendar, and tell some friends about it and come out and support our local alt weekly and tons of local bands.