Positively 4th St.

Songwriter Jonie Blinman is the host performer of the new, monthly Songwriters in a Round concert series at Studio on 4th, 432 E. Fourth St., 786-6460. She’ll also be performing at Made in Reno, a showcase of local songwriters featuring more than 20 local artists. For more information on these events, visit www.studio4th.com or www.myspace.com/jonieblinman

What makes a good song?

I don’t know if I’m the one to ask that. I think realness and passion from the artist. I like music from across all genres, and I don’t think it’s the genre necessarily that I like, but the integrity of the song and the lyrics that go with it. It has to evoke passion and emotion.

I like club music and stuff that you hear on the radio when you go to the club and you have a few drinks, but most of the time for listening I like stuff with depth, stuff that can relate to the life that I’m living. To me, that’s what good music is, but to another person, good music is going to be something completely different.

Tell me about Made in Reno.

Well, you know, I’m playing it. I don’t really know much about it except for the fact that there’s going to be 21 artists, each of us playing one song each. …

When you’re performing with a whole bunch of other songwriters, and you’re only playing one song, how do you choose which song?

This time around, they didn’t give us much option. … Mike Sion, the guy that’s putting it on, said, “Hey, give me a link to wherever you have your music up and out of your songs, I’ll pick three, and from those three you can tell me which song you want to do. So there wasn’t really much choice on this go-round. … A lot of my songs are more riff-driven, and Mike said he wants songs that are more melody driven for this particular event, so a lot of the songs that I would’ve chosen didn’t make the cut. And again that goes back to your question, “What makes a song good?” and everybody has their own opinion.

Tell me about the Songwriters in a Round events.

The Songwriters in a Round is something that I recently started here. It’s going to be a monthly event at the Studio on 4th … The first one was Kate Cotter, myself, Lisa McCuiston and Lacey Mattison. The next one coming up on June 20 is going to have Ryan James, Athena Mcintyre, Tyler Stafford and myself. … The one in July has some really big names, Seth Horan, Joel Ackerson, Grace Hutchison and myself. But basically it’s songwriters that are either solo artists or have a band, and it’s them stripped down—all four of us be onstage at one time, and each plays one song, and we rotate. So I play one song, and then Lisa plays one song, and then Kate plays a song, and then Lacey plays a song, and then we start it all over. So it’s really, really cool, because all the artists feed off of each othe. You can sing harmony with each other or you can let them do it on their own. … What’s great about it … is that I really wanted to bring the artists in this community together. … What I wanted to do is say, “Hey, you’ve got fans, and I’ve got fans that we have collaborately together, but you have fans that I don’t have, and I’ve got fans that you don’t have, and so let’s all sit together on a stage without our bands, and people that would not normally have heard of us, me or you, are going to now hear your stuff, and they won’t have to sit through a half an hour or an hour-long set of music they don’t know, but they get a sample of each artist. And some of them may have known of two of the artists, and not the others, or they may have known one … So it’s good for the fans, it’s good for the artists, and it’s good for the community for us to come together and really support each other.