Projects develop in a myriad of different ways at the Independent, and our newest online entertainment channel — Santa Barbara Independent Live Music Venues — came together when a friend from out of town was looking for a place to perform. Despite the enormous amount of information found on our website and on the interwebs, I quickly realized there wasn’t an easy way to find out which venues offered live music in town.
Not long after I put that idea into the “cool things to do someday” pile, I interviewed a potential intern, Tiana Molony, who was going through the master’s in journalism program at New York University. Not only did she have some knowledge of the local music scene, having grown up in Santa Barbara, she also had some understanding of both journalism and web production, and even better, she was game for diving into this special project.
It was in the late summer of 2023 that this project really began to take shape. Now, finally, after almost a year of Tiana working closely with our Web Content Manager Don Brubaker, our Calendar Editor Terry Ortega, our Copy Chief Tessa Reeg, and our Publisher Brandi Rivera (not to mention simultaneously writing stories for the Indy and finishing up her graduate studies at NYU), we’re excited to present Santa Barbara Independent Live Music Venues, which is LIVE ON our website at independent.com/santa-barbara-live-music-venues .