As a musician...
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11/4/2010
It's hard to get gigs here. While this area does have a few good venues (IOTA, Jammin' Java, etc), there are more musicians who want to play than the venues can handle. There doesn't seem to be a guaranteed crowd anywhere, either. Places are hit-or-miss, and so venues focus on a band's ability to bring people, not so much their actual talent. Which makes it hard to move here, because you can't get a gig without a crowd of fans. You can't get crowds of fans without gigs. Catch 22.
The people at open mics are pretty nice and the community of musicians itself is friendly and welcoming. It's not a bad place to play out if you don't care about getting paid or doing anything regularly.
It's a weird scene here, though. So far (I've been here about 4 months), I see a lot of old rich (usually ex-government types) people walking their dogs and driving big SUVs, and I see a lot of blue collar or serving position people from everywhere in the world you can imagine. Which means there's awesome ethnic food here: it's cheap and authentic. But there seems to be a lack of people here who are 20s-30s and culturally aware. Most of the people around the DC area I've met in that age bracket seem to care a lot about their budding careers and are making more money than they know what to do with. But they listen to really bad music and play stupid drinking games like they never left college. It's been hard to find the group of struggling artist types I normally call friends.
Sara | Arlington, VA