BELLOWS FALLS — Brian Joy and Chris Nostrand were born and bred in Bellows Falls.
They have been friends since they were 3.
And, they say, because they know what it's like to constantly hear the lament that “there's nothing to do here,” they founded Cider Magazine last fall.
Joy and Nostrand recently moved their operation to The Waypoint Center at 17 Depot St. on the Island. The move is one sign of how much their monthly music and arts publication has grown over the past eight months.
“We're at page 40 [for July] and it's only the first week [of putting that edition together],” Joy said last week. “We have some really great talent here in Vermont to cover; talent includes our writers. We've been really lucky in who wants to come on board and write for us.”
Cider's focus is mostly on the southern Vermont music scene, but it is starting to branch out to cover Keene and Claremont, N.H.
Nostrand is the person who stumps around the southern part of the state gathering information about who's performing.
“I don't have to sell a thing,” he said. “I just tell people who we are and what we're doing, and ask them if they want to be a part of it. And they do.”
“[Chris] is a people person. Nobody doesn't love Chris,” Joy said.
While Chris is Mr. Outside, Joy is Mr. Inside, the person responsible for putting the paper together each month. He has a substantial history in journalism that began as a beat reporter just out of the Marine Corps, several positions as an assistant editor, and then a stint as the editor-in-chief of a weekly in Florida.
“I decided I wanted to work for myself,” he said. “My wife and I decided we wanted to move back home to Vermont.”
Joy said that he heard the refrain of “there's nothing to do here” when he was growing up in Bellows Falls, and that he kept hearing it when he returned to his hometown.
“But I knew that wasn't true,” he said.
Joy recalled when he and some friends were out together one night, and someone suggested going to hear a band in Brattleboro.
They ended up listening to Jatoba, and Joy said he was “just blown away at how good they were.”
“Here's this local talent, and no one knew about them,” he said. “Now, everyone knows how good they are. We're so lucky here. We've got tons of talent tucked away here in Vermont. They just needed a way to let people know where they were and what they were doing.”
Joy and Nostrand are both world travelers, and acknowledge that the time they spent away from Vermont helped them to appreciate the level of talent that can be found in the region.
Joy said that he and Nostrand started knocking ideas around at the dinner table after the Jatoba show, and Joy came up with the idea of the entertainment magazine.
“It was natural that I ask Chris if he wanted to be a part of it. He was on board with the idea immediately,” Joy said. “But it wouldn't have mattered, because it was going to happen anyway. The idea was too good to let go.”
“My wife still complains sometimes 'there's nothing to do here',” Joy said. “I just open the paper to the calendar, and point, and say, 'Take your pick.'”
The paper covers about a dozen venues every weekend in which someone is playing music, from North Adams, Mass., to Rutland and Claremont.
Nostrand said they've never had any trouble getting advertising, even from the beginning. And the paper that started at 20 or so pages eight months ago now tops 40 pages “with lots of color.”
Joy said that they have plans to expand coverage to more of southern Vermont, and to push deeper into New Hampshire to include the Manchester area.
“We plan to move to better paper and even more color,” Joy said.
They don't plan to go any farther north than Lebanon and Hanover on the New Hampshire side, however.
“We don't want to get so big that we lose the quality of what we're doing,” Joy added.
Both Nostrand and Joy agree that the quality of the product matters most. In-depth interviews with local bands, as well as with nationally-known singers and songwriters, give readers an insider's look at the histories and styles of musicians. Coverage of artists and art venues, while a little less prominent, can also be found inside Cider.
And both are quick to say that Cider wouldn't exist without the strong support they've received from the community.
An easy sell
Nostrand acknowledged their aggressive strategy of getting Cider known to businesses and to people looking for something to do in the region.
“We distribute to all our advertisers,” he said. “But we also make sure that the service people, like waitresses and bartenders, the people we see every day making our sandwiches, have a copy too. Even if its just one or two copies, we make sure it's out there.”
Nostrand said that when he's out distributing the magazine, he hears constantly about how appreciative the advertisers are.
“They tell me they see the magazine everywhere, and it's not just laying there. People are picking it up and reading it. They just love that,” he said.
In addition to doing sales and promotion, Nostrand writes a beer column for Cider.
“I'm a sort of a beer connoisseur. I've always enjoyed [microbrews],” he said, adding that he works as a bartender and has worked in small breweries as well.
While not a writer per se, “I write about what I know and what I love,” he said, smiling.
Joy said that Cider make aggressive use of social networking like Twitter and Facebook, both for its advertisers and the venues it covers.
However, Joy emphasized that “it's the content that helped accomplish our success. People know that we don't publish anything that isn't about music or art. We're never going to cover local news, and we try to tell people what they can expect ahead of time, instead of covering an event after it's happened.”
In addition to putting out a growing monthly newspaper, Joy and Nostrand have yet another job. They are unofficial travel guides for the Bellows Falls area.
Besides being Cider's new home, The Waypoint Center remains a welcome center for visitors to Bellows Falls.
At some point, they said, the center will be staffed by volunteers. Until then, Joy and Nostrand said that they are happy to answer questions, and they point people where they want to go.
“It's all networking. We get to tell them about [Cider] and they go away with a copy. It's all good for us,” Joy said.