Amanda Toye/ Photo by Abigail Callicoat
The music scene in Searcy has been diverse for many years. From heavy metal to country, Searcy has housed several bands and individual musicians —allowing them to play at local venues downtown and host music for the community.
“I started writing music in the summer after 8th grade.” Searcy High School senior Silas Carpenter said. “When I record I play everything and write all the instrument parts. I think I’m kinda a control freak when it comes to my music–which I don’t think that’s really a bad thing.”
Carpenter prefers playing shows with a band as opposed to solo performances but says it can be hard to find a band that suits his sound.
“People don’t really care about art in Searcy —or music —any kind of art,” Carpenter said. “The hardest part about Searcy is in a place with a smaller amount of people, you’re gonna have a smaller amount of people who care about art.”
Carpenter shared how it can be difficult to find a community of people in Searcy who are passionate about music and art — he has found this to be isolating at times. Carpenter has amassed nearly 500 monthly Spotify listeners and released a single titled “Red Forever” on Halloween. Carpenter’s next project is set to release next Tuesday. This will be a demo album titled “Bedtime Songs.”
Social media plays an important role in modern music discovery and can make finding a community difficult for many new music artists.
“In Nashville, if you’re making music, you have like a 95 percent chance of meeting someone that either wants to sign you or introduce you to like big label people,” senior Sam Busbey, who releases music under the name of “greedi”, said. “But, here, it’s just a bunch of kids. If someone does make music it’s in their garage. It’s not convenient connections that you can make here.”
Busbey shared he does not enjoy doing live performances and has only played two shows in Searcy so far. Busbey has a new project coming out soon, and a single dropping today. Busbey has attracted over 60,000 monthly Spotify listeners and is currently signed with 25/7 Records, a label based out of Los Angeles.
Smaller music artists often take off through live performances or social media presence.
“Zashed started as Jackson Eats the Floor,” junior and bass guitar player Jacob Ash, said. “At first it was just our friends —our friends, and people we knew in town. That’s what the first two shows really were. Now, I wouldn’t even say we even have a Searcy fan base. Most of our fan base, I would say, it’s outside of Searcy.”
Ash has played many shows with Jackson Edwards, Beckham King and Kyle Jetton with the band, “Zashed” and plans to go on tour with them in January. Ash recently started playing with a new local band, Slyce, alongside Zashed. Zashed has accumulated nearly 700 monthly listeners on Spotify, with their latest release being in June 2023.
