Cartter Fontaine films luthier Scott Baxendale at work for an episode of Behind the Scene.

When Cartter Fontaine from Dirtty Toe Productions and I set out to conduct the first few interviews for our aptly-titled blog series, Behind the Scene, we weren’t sure how they would turn out. We’re used to covering musicians here at Flagpole, but when our editor gave us the go-ahead to pull back the curtain, we were grateful for the opportunity if unsure how to approach it exactly.

We love writing about bands, but there’s another story to be told about our town’s scene, and we hope our series contributes meaningfully to this telling. At first, it was a work in progress; usually, we would show up to speak with one of our subjects and tell them that we were in the midst of an experiment to figure out how to best profile some of Athens music’s finest offstage supporters.

And although we’re still getting our feet wet after five installments, we’re awfully proud of how it has turned out so far. From showcasing talent buyers to instrument makers, publicists to guitar technicians, our goal has been to provide visual and verbal accounts of the members of the Athens community that work often-thankless jobs in the business of music. 

As might be apparent with no installment posted today, we’re taking a couple weeks off. It feels like a perfect opportunity to recharge our batteries and give the newly wedded Mr. Fontaine a much-deserved break (congratulations, Cartter!). 

We have plenty of interviews and video waiting to be released, so fear not. We’ll be back in two weeks with a great feature on Chase Park Transduction engineer and producer Drew Vandenberg. Looking ahead, we’ve also got an excellent two-for-one profile of Colm O’Reilly and Roger Levine from the Georgia Theatre sound crew on tap—with some guest appearances that we think many of you will enjoy. 

If you’ve been following our installments—or if you’re hearing about Behind the Scene for the first time—we’d love to hear from you. Do you know someone in the music industry whose work deserves some time in the spotlight? Send us a tip.

Also, we want to know how to make the project the best it can be, so any and all comments are welcome. Do you want to hear from the interviewees via more Soundcloud embeds? More photos? What questions do you want answered from the people we profile? Your feedback matters, so don’t hesitate to let our editor in on any ideas you have at [email protected]. Or, leave a comment below.

Thanks for tuning in so far, and we hope you stick around for more of what’s to come.