People filed into Alienated Majesty Books in North Campus on Thursday night and found spots to stand between the shelves. But this wasn’t an author reading; the crowd was there to hear People. Make Me. Make Things!, the “only cottage core emo band to ever exist.”
It was all hands on deck for the band’s final show. The puppet act Puppet Bucket performed, along with the emo band Woodcutter(s) and folk act Bad Luck Penny. A one-man project called Fishboy played wholesome songs about characters in a fictional neighborhood.
Band members borrowed gear, worked sound and door. They joined the audience to support each other’s sets.
Lorianne Willett
/
KUT News
A sign for the Tiny Sounds show hangs inside Alienated Majesty. Members of the bands share gear, work door and sound, and help put on the DIY show.
“I think a lot of us have maybe not felt very accepted perhaps in different venues,” said Juniper Card, one of two lead singers in Bad Luck Penny. “DIY kind of gives us that ability to just express ourselves in whatever way that we want and to make the music that we wanna make.”
DIY, or do-it-yourself, shows are put on with no budget by musicians and their friends, fans and any others they can wrangle to help out. They’ve become common for Alienated Majesty, thanks to the store’s partnership with the booker Tiny Sounds.
“Tiny Sounds is a DIY collective,” said Mat Zuniga, who co-founded the group. “We primarily work with touring bands to help them get shows here in Austin and do tape releases for local bands. We work with a lot of houses and bookstores, places where we can do shows in nontraditional spaces.”
Bands that don’t appeal to a mainstream audience or larger venues can find community through DIY shows, he said.
“ We never take cuts from our shows. We work and try to build the scene, but we’re not trying to profit off it,” Zuniga said. “There’s not a lot of money in DIY, and once everyone starts taking a cut, there’s really not much left for the traveling bands. And because we primarily work with touring bands, it’s important to us that we stay away from that.”
Arnold House
Zuniga launched Tiny Sounds with a few friends in 2022. They posted videos and photos on social media as a way to promote and keep a record of the emo and punk bands they were watching and playing in.
“ It really did start off as just documentation of live sets from house venues,” Zuniga said.
Later that year, Zuniga and the group moved into a house together in East Austin. They used the Tiny Sounds Instagram page to book and announce lineups for shows in their new space. They called it Arnold House.
The team realized touring bands with a more DIY sensibility were having a hard time finding venues to play in Austin. Local bands in genres like punk and screamo weren’t being discovered outside of Austin, either. Arnold House and Tiny Sounds became a way to bridge that gap.
While these scenes are big in Denton or San Antonio, Zuniga said, a lack of all-age venues in Austin has made it harder for these kinds of bands to build a following — especially since many of them have a fan base mostly under 21.
In March 2023, Tiny Sounds threw Philly Cheesekate fest. The event celebrated skateboarding and, well, Philly Cheesesteaks. The group booked vendors and put a skate ramp in the backyard of Arnold House. There was a daylong lineup of music from all over the country.
“We had like 100 people at our house,” Zuniga said. “We made cheesesteaks ourselves and hosted a bunch of punk and emo bands. That was the first show we did that was really big.”
After the fest, Tiny Sounds started hearing from more bands, booking more shows and reaching more people. It had grown beyond hosting shows at Arnold House, but another regular all-age, fee-free venue was hard to come by.
Then, in summer 2023, Alienated Majesty opened.
Zuniga thought the leftist beliefs of the shop overlapped with the goals of Tiny Sounds.
Lorianne Willett
/
KUT News
Michelle Zhang, who does PR and marketing for Alienated Majesty, plays violin with Woodcutter(s) during the show.
“ Everyone at Alienated Majesty is paid very much a living wage,” he said. “There are no bosses or managers. They believe the musicians and the bands playing should get all the door money, and it’s the same with Tiny Sounds.”
He became the main booker — helping to organize author talks and readings. But he mainly hosted Tiny Sounds shows. The store turned into the collective’s new home base.
The violinist for People. Make Me. Make Things!, Michelle Zhang, is the PR and marketing bookseller for the shop.
“We kind of adopted Mat,” said Zhang, who is engaged to Zuniga. “Screamo and punk have always been on the left side of music for all of music history. And that’s something that we really embody here at the shop.”
Cheesesteaks for everyone
Today, Tiny Sounds has more than 6,000 followers on Instagram. Zuniga said he believes that popularity comes from the group encouraging people to not just come to shows, but to participate.
“Everyone can get involved — even if they don’t play music,” Zuniga said. “ From running door to running sound to making sure we have equipment, drawing our own stuff. … It’s completely DIY.”
The team wants to make sure fans feel just as celebrated as artists.
“ Tiny Sounds has always felt like there has been equal value given to people playing the show as the people watching the show,” Zhang said.
By making everyone feel included, the collective has built its own community within the city’s music scene.
“ It’s easier to strike up conversations and foster new friendships at Tiny Sounds shows,” said Michael White, a Tiny Sounds artist and longtime fan.
The core of Tiny Sounds is to make music not just entertaining, but accessible.
“Music and magic should be for everybody,” White said. “If you can lower the barriers to entry for participation and enjoyment as much as you can, that’s how you foster a community that is vibrant and welcoming.”