All Night Sessions
– By Kelly Patch –
It has been a little more than 20 years since I last contributed to the Independent, but I still have a great fondness for the few years I worked there. I started writing album reviews (which I enjoyed), but I was not great at forming coherent opinions and transforming them into thoughtful words. I remember reading Adam Mast’s movie reviews and wanting my thoughts to flow as freely as his did, and sound as legitimate as he did, but I never felt like I quite got there.
I then started working closely with Josh Warburton, Kevin Jones, Adam, and many other contributors working on ideas for upcoming issues, new features we could introduce, or going out and taking pictures for stories ready to run. I met many great people and got to see glimpses into their points of view and what inspired them to write so passionately about it. The different kinds of feature stories that ran were as diverse and wide-ranging as the landscape of the southwest area itself.
Josh Warburton, Kevin Jones, and I would pull all-night sessions on Mondays and Tuesdays editing submissions, laying out the final copy, and getting the issue to publication on time. Recently I spoke with Josh and we both still don’t know why we chose to work the long hours that we did. But those overnight sessions are some of my fondest memories from my tenure.
Mostly, this trip down recollection road has me thinking about the role a free publication devoted to the arts/cultural scene has on a community. I remember having the Independent as a resource was critical to finding out about new movies, music, live shows, galleries, etc. Getting the new issue every mid-week and knowing I could find some info on events to check out was a necessity for the upcoming weekend. Even now as I’ve traveled across the country, I’ve always looked for that same type of publication wherever I’ve landed. In today’s digitized news world, I realize how hard it may be for companies to keep creating and curating this type of content, but I’m still very appreciative of it.
And having gone from being an avid reader to an employee contributing to its publication, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much love and passion was put into the creation of each issue. Having grown older now and becoming a more-jaded bastard than previous, I can say it’s very rare to find a staff that cares as much about what it produces as the Indy staff did back then, and still do to this day.
Happy 25 Indy!!
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