By David Menconi,
Raleigh News & Observer Staff Writer
This week's announcement that No Depression magazine was shutting down took most of its fans by surprise. The bi-monthly magazine, which helped define as well as popularize alternative-country music, will end a 13-year run with its May/June issue.
"I feel gobsmacked," says Raleigh's Phyllis Gordon, a subscriber for nearly a decade and one of No Depression's many Triangle readers. "This is really a shock. It's like finding out your best friend has moved to China."
All sorts of metaphors have been flying around since Tuesday's announcement. The publishers cite declining record-company advertising revenue as the primary reason for the shutdown. But the magazine's folding is also a sign of the changing habits of music buyers, especially younger ones.
"It's like one of my favorite bands is calling it quits, only this time I'm sort of in the band," says Rick Cornell, one of several local writers who regularly contributes to No Depression. (Full disclosure: I am another.)
No Depression began in Seattle in 1995, named for the Carter Family song "No Depression in Heaven" (covered in 1990 by the pioneering alternative-country band Uncle Tupelo) and an early online music discussion group. The magazine frequently covered North Carolina acts, starting with its first issue.
I did a short feature on the Raleigh band Whiskeytown for that first issue, after spending a memorable evening trying to interview frontman Ryan Adams at the Berkeley Café. The interview ended prematurely when a drunk calling himself "Kenneth From Nashville" began making threats and the police showed up, triggering an all-night standoff -- the first and last time I've ever had an interview cut short by third-party psychosis.
No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock thought this was so amusing that he printed the interview and back story under the headline, "A short interview's journey into hell." Over the next few years, 6 String Drag, Jolene, the Backsliders, Flat Duo Jets and Jim Lauderdale were among the North Carolina acts to score full-length features in No Depression, gaining nationwide exposure at a time when that was hard to come by. Even in the Internet age, getting a feature in the magazine remains a coup.
"When I first talked to the Avett Brothers about managing them, the game plan I presented had getting a story in No Depression as a main goal," says Dolph Ramseur, manager of the Concord-based band. "That was a big point for us. No Depression always felt like a punk-rock fanzine, but covering roots music. This is terrible news, really sad."
From Willie to Wilco
No Depression always had influence beyond its modest circulation of about 30,000 copies.
"It's been like the Bible for that style of music," says longtime subscriber Molly Flynn of Raleigh. "It's hard to imagine it gone."
The magazine began as an attempt to find common ground between classic old-school country and young upstarts. So it covered Nickel Creek as well as Ralph Stanley, Willie Nelson as well as Wilco -- plus choice historical obscurities, such as the long-forgotten R&B singer Little Miss Cornshucks.
In the process, No Depression became a brand. When the soundtrack to 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" unexpectedly sold 7 million copies and won an album-of-the-year Grammy Award, the mainstreaming of No Depression's alternative country was at hand.
"Things get taken for granted as time goes by, and I don't think people remember what a void No Depression stepped into in 1995," says Fred Mills, managing editor of the competing music magazine Harp. "What stands out to me is that they were able to very deftly draw a direct line from Johnny Cash to the Replacements. And this all happened pre-MySpace, long before blogs and all that."
Untimely move
In 2000, No Depression's connection to North Carolina became more direct when Blackstock moved to Durham (co-editor Grant Alden now lives in Kentucky, while co-publisher/co-owner Kyla Fairchild is still in Seattle). Blackstock returned to the Seattle area a few years later before coming back and buying a house in Mebane last fall -- which makes the timing of the magazine's shutdown about as unfortunate as it could possibly be.
But as outlined in the "publishers' note" released Tuesday, the principals don't have much choice. While increasing paper and postal costs are factors, the single biggest reason is the decline of the U.S. record industry.
Album sales in America have declined 36 percent this decade, from a high of 785 million in 2000 to 500 million last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As a result, record labels have drastically cut their print-advertising budgets.
No Depression's advertising revenue has declined even faster than U.S. album sales -- down 36 percent in two years -- and the pace is picking up, pushing the magazine's page counts lower. At 80 pages, the March/April issue is just half the length of the same issue in 2004.
"It became apparent at the start of this year that things had changed," Blackstock says. "When we only had enough advertising for 80 pages in March/April, which is always one of our biggest issues, we knew we had a serious problem that would not balance out if we kept going into the future."
As a small business, No Depression doesn't have the deep pockets to hang on and hope for a turnaround. Reading the writing on the wall, Blackstock and his partners opted to shut down rather than risk going into debt or bankruptcy. No Depression's Web site will continue at nodepression.net, although not on the same scale as the magazine.
Of course, No Depression's demise is indicative of larger trends beyond the magazine, record and advertising industries. Shifting consumer interests also enter into the equation, especially those of younger adults.
"The 12-to-34 demographic gets their music on iTunes, their videos on YouTube, their friends on Facebook," says Karen Albritton, president of the Raleigh marketing firm Capstrat. "Do we really expect them to get their entertainment news in print? Advertisers chase trends, and right now the trend is online."
That leaves niche publications of all kinds struggling to survive. No Depression probably won't be the last such magazine to go down.
"The ad-revenue thing is very troublesome for all of us," says Harp's Mills. "All the things [No Depression] pointed out about print media, that's all true and it's the canary in the coal mine. Everybody has to adapt to electronic media more rapidly, because we see a lot of advertising shifting. Any magazine not in a position to do that ... Well, they're in trouble."
david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or (919) 829-4759.
News & Observer music critic David Menconi has had a byline in 73 out of 74 issues of No Depression magazine. He is listed as a "contributing editor" on its masthead, but receives no compensation beyond freelance fees for stories published in the magazine.
NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE - A TIMELINE
1995 - Issue No. 1 debuts in the fall, 32 pages long with Son Volt on the cover. Raleigh's Whiskeytown gets a short feature.
1996 - The magazine goes from quarterly to bimonthly with issue No. 5, September-October.
1997 - Whiskeytown appears on the cover of the July-August issue, a full-length feature written by co-editor Peter Blackstock. Whiskeytown is also one of four bands on a "No Depression" concert tour sponsored by the magazine, which has its first 100-page issue.
1998 - "No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music (Whatever That Is)" is published by Nashville-based Dowling Press. It reprises magazine features on the Backsliders and Whiskeytown.
2000 - A January-February feature headlined "Ready for the Country" profiles "five emerging insurgents," two of which are from the Triangle: Trailer Bride and future Grammy nominee Tift Merritt.
2001 - No Depression receives an Utne Magazine award for arts and literature coverage.
2003 - Inside color is added. Page count hits 160 for several issues.
2005 - The September-October issue with Nickel Creek on the cover is the magazine's biggest ever at 176 pages. A second anthology is published, "The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music" (University of Texas Press), in conjunction with the magazine's 10-year anniversary.
2006 - The year's longest issue is 144 pages. Concord's Avett Brothers get their first full-length feature in the March-April issue.
2007 - The page count peaks at 128 in March-April, shrinking to 112 pages the rest of the year.
2008 - Down to 80 pages for the March-April issue, the magazine announces it will cease print publication after its May-June issue.
David Menconi
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