Looking for new local music? Free concert will showcase 5 Fort Worth acts

Rita Alfaro had a difficult choice to make: Which five acts would play Amplify817’s second annual live showcase?

“It was hard to narrow down,” she said. “We have about 90 artists on our platform at this point … I wanted to make sure there was a little bit of everything possible on that stage.”

Alfaro is a music librarian for the city’s public library system and helps manage its instrument lending program, music events and Amplify817— a streaming platform for hosting and highlighting music from Fort Worth artists.

On Aug. 18, the night will kick off with the sounds of Japanese percussion filling the courtyard in front of Will Rogers Auditorium, courtesy of the local band Goisagi. From there, four other local acts will head inside and take the stage: alternative pop artist Amanda Victoria; indie and alternative trio Phantomelo; singer and songwriter Denver Williams with support from backing band The Gas Money; and hip hop artist Lou CharLe$.

Each act is involved in the city’s music scene.

Singer and songwriter Denver Williams was born in Fort Worth, raised in Crowley and moved away for about a decade before coming back to the metro in 2012.

“By the time I got back, I was surprised how much it was changing and growing,” he said. “I was really excited about that, and now I’m really happy to be based here.”

Fort Worth has shaped his music in big ways and small, he said. The artist recently made a short film to accompany his album about living on East Berry Street and moving over to Fairmount.

“I grew up on country music, and then I moved onto the weirder rock and roll and experimental noise stuff,” he said. “It is nice to feel really comfortable being able to make a blend of music for one second — be playing something that sounds like country music — and then the next second just be wheels off.” 

Williams promises to bring a pedal steel guitar player and a jam-packed set to the showcase.

Goisagi will set the tone for an energetic evening as the event’s opening act. As a taiko, or drum, group their ensemble uses traditional Japanese percussion practices, also called kumi-daiko.

Sean Ibañez, the group’s founder and artistic director, said that this style of music changed the way he saw percussion because it’s not just an auditory experience — it’s also something that connects on a physical and visual level.

“The physical impact that percussion at that scale has on your body is really very impressive. You feel every beat inside your body because it’s so powerful,” he said. “It’s not just banging drums, it’s choreography. It’s what a lot of people would describe as dance. There’s a lot of physical movement. … It really just kind of changes how you connect with drumming.”Today there are many ways for artists to get their work out to the public, but, for Ibañez, opportunities like the Amplify817 platform are important.

“We’re on Apple Music, Spotify and stuff like that, too. And, I guess, in a sense that gets your music out there,” he said. “But with something like Amplify 817, it is more about building community and seeing the local artists around us.”

The event on Aug. 18 gives all of the musicians on the lineup the chance to build that community and share their music with people who have not sought out that genre otherwise.

“If you go to see a metal band, you’re going to see two other metal bands, right?” Ibañez said. “Having something as diversified as this helps to bring not only the artists together, but the audience together to see and experience genres of music.”

Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.