Coyote Music's ad in Texas Music magazine is part of a larger, extensive promotional campaign for the Viva Big Bend music festival and industry conference in Marfa, Alpine, and Marathon, Texas, July 26-29, 2012.

One of my first performances behind a drum kit was with my high school rock band, Placid Acid. We booked a "Teen Night" at the Granada Theatre in Alpine, Texas and promoted that early Sunday night show with hand-drawn flyers and lots of begging of friends to attend. It ended up being a pretty successful event. How can you go wrong when your set includes covers of Cheap Trick and Kiss, along with a rocked-out version of Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling"?

Fast forward two decades or so...

When I saw that El Tule, Texas Tornados, Graham Wilkinson, Bob Schneider, and the Josh Abbott Band were playing that very same Granada Theatre as part of the Viva Big Bend music festival and industry conference, I was compelled to promote it. Call it nostalgia...or maybe I was just happy for the Granada that they were getting some better acts on their calendar.

So after an email exchange with Texas Music magazine's Editor, Stewart Ramser, I set out on a web-based adventure to create an online promotional campaign for Viva Big Bend. While Marfa's been a cultural hotbed for a while, this is the biggest music festival I know of to include Alpine. It was with Viva Big Bend specifically in mind, that the end result of this festival-promotion campaign turned out a little something like this:

www.coyotemusic.com/festivals/viva-big-bend

Behind that main Festival page, there is a ton of new content for your viewing pleasure. You'll find pages listing Viva Big Bend's venues and artists, along with a complete schedule. To fill these pages, we created a couple new News items, 10 Venue pages (complete with Google maps), 20 Event pages, 51 Artist pages, and made numerous festival-specific changes across the site.

Please take a look around and [Facebook] Like the bands and shows you like in real-life. You should also pick up a copy of Texas Music and spend some time reading their fantastic coverage of the artists and venues that make up Viva Big Bend. While this isn't ACL or Lollapalooza (yet), Viva Big Bend's inaugural weekend is bringing more than 50 talented acts from around the state to three scenic and wonderful small West Texas towns. It's a big event that, with your support, is poised to return for many years to come.

Photo by Danh Hoang