Q&A Number One

This interview is with Jeff Wallace, a music writer from MySectreBoston.com. You can see Jeff's profile at http://mysecretboston.com/our-team/jeff-wallace. He is A Boston College graduate who loves music, and was recently preparing for a music festival "Rumble on the River" that hosted music alongside the Head of the Charles crew races. The first Q&A I wanted to ask Jeff how he got into writing for MySecretBoston and where he wanted to go next, and I think I accomplished that.

Q: How did you get into writing for the webMySecretBoston?

A:During the last semester of my senior year at BC I took a Feature Writing class with a professor by the name of Jon Marcus. He was the former editor for Boston Magazine and I was told to take his class if I wanted to become a better writer. I had written for the newspaper at BC for two years, but never had any official training until that point (I was a marketing major). The class was exactly what I needed. Jon really knew his shit and is a master of writing things the way they should be said (if that makes sense). Three or four classes in I asked if there was anything I could do outside of class and that's when he told me about his site MySecretBoston. At this point they'd been designing the site and collecting write ups for about 6 months and there were maybe 20 interns and 7 or 8 admin sort of people (we've streamlined it considerably since then). It would be almost another year until we launched (Feb 1, 2010). I started as an intern, basically doing a few short write ups per week about restaurants or bands. Thankfully the economy sucked when I graduated because there were no real jobs for the taking. That's when I decided to take my role with MySecretBoston more seriously.

Q:Why music? What do you like best about writing about music?

A: Why not? I hate news writing. It's too formulaic I spend almost all hours of my waking life thinking about bands, shows, and the music bizz. I suck at playing music so I feel like this is my best way to get involved. The best thing about music is that it's endless. It's overwhelming. There's no way that you can hear everything and pinpoint every influence. But you can try!

Q: Where do you want to take this writing career next?

A: To be brutally honest, I'd like to monetize it, whether that means driving more traffic to MySecretBoston, or leveraging the contacts I have to find another job for a legit company. The best part about what I've done so far is the networking. I've met a lot of people who might be able to help down the line. The sorts of people who are good to know if you ever want to get something done.

Q: How did you get MySecretBoston to give you money for the music festival?

A: MySecretBoston actually didn't front the money. Community Rowing, an organization that promotes public rowing on the Charles River did. The just opened a brand new boathouse and are celebrating their 25th anniversary. They wanted to make rowing seem hip and attract new, youthful rowers. That's where we came in. It was a win-win, great exposure for both of us. Our web-numbers have grown substantially as a result. It's one thing to be online, but to have an in-person presence on top of it is most important to our survival. I plan on using this experience to host more music events.

Q: How are you going to use this festival for your writing career?

A: Everything I do is simply a means to meet more people and learn some new skills along the way. Writing is a great skill to have, whether I use it directly for a publication or indirectly in some other manner. I'm sometimes hesitant to call myself a writer because there's so many other things I do.