The RPM Challenge wraps its 10th year
and looks ahead to the next decade
by Craig Robert Brown, photos courtesy of RPM Challenge
For Karen Marzloff, a co-founder and organizer for the RPM Challenge, the last decade has gone by in the blink of an eye.
“It’s amazing. It feels like we just got started,” said Marzloff.
This year, as Marzloff, co-founder and organizer Dave Karlotski, and RPM’s legion of volunteers prepare for the creative challenge’s wrap-up listening party on March 28 at 3S Artspace, she can’t help but think about the dedicated musicians she’s connected with over 10 years, and how much work they’ve put into their submissions.
“If you think about it, if you’ve participated every year for the last 10 years, you’ve dedicated a whole year of your life putting your music first,” Marzloff said.
RPM challenges musicians to write and record an album of at least 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music during the month of February. This year, 500 bands from around the globe completed the challenge. Over the last decade, thousands of musicians have submitted albums. Peter Squires is one of those musicians. His band, Farthest Forests, was formed specifically for the RPM Challenge in 2011.
“It’s been the cause of my most productive writing,” said Squires, who’s also part of the band The Landladys.
RPMer Tim Hazelton included a personal note with his album.
Squires credits RPM’s deadline-driven challenge with helping him get out of a recent creative rut. Not wanting to quit, the pressure of delivering a completed album at the end of February forced Squires to write new material. “When it’s done, for me at least, it feels so good to have something new to share,” he said. “It just feels so productive and worthwhile.”
Sharing all the new music created as part of the challenge at the annual listening party is also gratifying — Squire remembers being upstairs at the Press Room for the 2011 listening party and hearing one of his songs start playing.
“People were clapping along. You could just kind of tell that they were into it. And that felt awesome in the same way as a live performance feels awesome when the crowd is into it,” he said.
“The RPM Challenge … forces you to focus on your craft and then put it out there. It’s not enough to just write it. You have to put it out in the world for people to hear.”
— Renee Bouchard
It’s a feeling shared throughout the Seacoast’s RPM community.
“What I think is so cool about the RPM Challenge is that it really forces you to focus on your craft and then put it out there,” said Renee Bouchard. “It’s not enough to just write it. You have to put it out in the world for people to hear.”
Bouchard, who performs original children’s music under the name Auntie Née and Lele Rae, said the experience of writing her first RPM album in 2014 inspired her to follow a long-time dream of writing and recording music. She took her 2014 submission into the studio to have it professionally mastered and produced, and she plans to do the same with this year’s submission.
“That experience that I had in the studio is one I’ll never forget,” she said.
In a way, the challenge has helped shape the direction of Bouchard’s music. The album that came out of her 2014 submission helped her book gigs and grow her fan base. Live shows, she said, are an important way to get feedback from an audience.
“You never know how people are going to respond to your music, and you won’t know until you give them an opportunity to hear it,” said Bouchard.
As the musicians participating each year in RPM have seen their art transform and grow, so too have Marzloff and Karlotski seen the challenge itself change.
Looking ahead to the next decade of RPM Challenges, Marzloff said she’d like to see it grow and has been toying with the idea of moving to a digital submission form, but is hesitant knowing that for many, creating a submission is also about the handcrafted album package — something future generations might not give as much thought to.
“I don’t think people talk about albums now as much as they used to. CDs were pretty much the only reasonable format to work in, and now people barely even have CD drives on their computers,” Marzloff said.
a scene from the 2010 RPM listening party at The Music Hall
This year’s listening party coincides with the opening of 3S Artspace, a boon for the local art and music community, according to Marzloff. For her, the listening party has always felt like a family gathering. It reinforces a feeling amongst the music scene that what they do matters, according to Marzloff, allowing them to share in each other’s struggles and successes and make connections.
“I’m really excited to have the whole local music scene all together under one roof during the listening party,” she said. “I feel like it’s one of the ways (the music community) connects.”
When RPM started in 2006, Marzloff and Karlotski were impressed with the 165 RPM submissions they received. Its popularity rose and in subsequent years, they began receiving submissions from all seven continents. This year’s party is special, Marzloff said. It gives her the opportunity to reflect on the last 10 years of a community the challenge has helped nurture while also looking toward its future.
“It’s nice to have this sort of creative cocoon that RPM makes for musicians every February,” said Marzloff. “When I think about what the next 10 years brings, I would love to make sure we’re keeping that space available for people to come to and feel good about participating. That’s what I’d like to see stay, even if RPM grows and we have the capacity to have many, many more participants. I’d like to keep with it a feeling of a personal experience and a personal community for people.”
The RPM Challenge listening party takes place Saturday, March 28 at 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free, but RSVPs are requested at 3sarts.org. Portsmouth Community Radio will launch a 24-hour RPM Challenge global listening marathon the next day, March 29, online at wscafm.org and on the radio at 106.1 FM.
At top of page: Jim Schliestett (left) and Dean Rubine of $ense at the RPM finish line at RiverRun Bookstore.