Photograph courtesy A-Squared Industries
A-Squared Industries
A-SQUARED Industries is the multifaceted invention of Andy and Annie Skinner, a husband-and-wife team whose devotion to the music scene runs much deeper than their revered Broad Ripple record store, Indy CD & Vinyl. Back in 2005, Andy was a full-time all-ages concert promoter and Annie a record shop employee who was also in charge of grassroots marketing for Sony Music artists. Their mutual grind led to the birth of A-Squared Industries, an enterprise that went on to DJ events, promote shows, launch a record label, and generally foster Indy’s blossoming musical counterculture at DJ dance parties Let Go!, Real Talk!, and Spellbound. Later this year, they’re set to open a Broad Ripple all-ages venue, The 808, next door to Indy CD & Vinyl.
Photograph courtesy Musical Family Tree
Musical Family Tree
IN 2004, a tech-savvy music enthusiast with a soft spot for Bloomington’s 1990s music scene created what would become a mainstay of Hoosier music history—Musical Family Tree (MFT). Jeb Banner’s “love letter to Indiana music,” now a nonprofit, started as a simple, crowd-sourced digital archive, an attempt to preserve the cassette-recorded echoes of grunge and alt-rock. As he tinkered away, turning his computer into a makeshift web host, MFT snowballed into something bigger. “I’m not much of a coder,” Banner says of those early days. But that didn’t stop him from building a site—years before Spotify—that would become a playable (and meticulously cross-referenced) history of Indiana’s music, from Margo & the Nuclear So and So’s, to Zero Boys, to Eisenhower Field Day.
MOKB Presents
JOSH BAKER, CEO of concert promotion company MOKB Presents, has spent the last decade turning Indianapolis into a music destination. The genesis of the company was partner Craig “Dodge” Lile’s early-2000s music site, My Old Kentucky Blog, a trusted source for pop commentary. That same spirit of smart engagement guides its concert promotion offshoot, which has Baker and his team hustling to get the city on the map by convincing national acts like Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, and The Head and the Heart to play local stages, including his own venues, the 400-capacity Hi-Fi and adjoining Hi-Fi Annex. On Baker’s watch, MOKB has become a powerhouse, booking everything from small club shows to arena acts and working its way up to 30 full-time staffers.
