In the early morning hours of Nov. 29, a female student was raped somewhere between midtown and Fraternity Row. The 20-year-old victim said she accepted a ride from a man she did not know after leaving 101 Cantina and the man then sexually battered her in his car. She was able to escape from the car afterward and was picked up by a female driver passing by who saw her running from her attacker. The driver called the police and took the victim to the hospital.

In both the UF news release of the attack and an e-mail alert sent to the entire university listserv, the University Police Department took the opportunity to remind people of some “basic safety considerations.” The list included: “Avoid walking alone” and “Stay in well-lighted areas away from alleys, bushes, and entryways.”

These “safety considerations” are rape myths. According to a 2005 National Crime Victimization Study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, 73 percent of all sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim, not strange masked men lurking in the shadows.

“Most of the cases we see are not the stranger jumping out of the bushes,” said Chris Loschiavo, Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution at UF.

Loschiavo said almost all sexual assault cases at UF involve “two students who have had a lot to drink and the issue is, was one person able to consent to sexual activity.”

In addition to perpetuating false advice and rape myths, every link on UPD’s website that is supposed to lead to UF policies and procedures concerning sexual assault as well as links to rape awareness resources are broken. One link directs to UF’s own rape awareness group, CARE, which is not only a broken link, but is a group that no longer exists on campus.

Despite the public image that UPD presents today, this was not always the case. At one time, UF was a national leader in rape awareness and prevention tactics. Now, in light of the fact that local and national rape statistics have not improved in decades, UF is beginning to make an effort to once again learn and implement effective ways of preventing rape.

STRIVE, UF’s current rape awareness program, reports on its website that one in four female college students will be victims of sexual assault — defined as any unwanted sexual contact. The U.S. Department of Justice confirms this statistic, and states that once women graduate college, the ratio widens to one in six.

STRIVE has also been able to bring that one in four statistic closer to home.

“When we give an anonymous poll in a classroom of 500 and ask ‘Have you experienced a sexual assault?’ it matches up. We’ve asked every time and it’s always in the 20 percent to 25 percent range,” said Ron Del Moro, peer educator in the STRIVE program.

STRIVE, which stands for Sexual Trauma/Interpersonal Violence Education, aims to educate the university community by holding “open, non-judgmental forums where we explore questions such as ‘Why does this happen?’ and ‘What can we do?’”

This January, STRIVE plans to expand by implementing a new program modeled after the University of New Hampshire’s successful program called Bringing in the Bystander. This program has a heavy focus on bystander intervention.

“A lot of people stand around and see a lot of shady stuff go down,” Del Moro said. “We want to get those people involved.”

According to the UNH Bringing in the Bystander website, under the tag line, “Everyone in the community has a role to play in ending sexual violence,” the program “approaches both women and men as potential bystanders or witnesses to risky behaviors related to sexual violence around them.”

UNH developed this program through in-house research conducted by Prevention Innovations, a consulting, training and research unit that develops, implements and evaluates programs, policies and practices to end violence against women on campus. Vice President Joe Biden spoke at UNH in April on the success of the program and called on everyone to take responsibility. Biden, a long-time proponent of rape awareness, co-authored the Violence Against Women Act that passed in 1994.

Back in the 1980s, cutting-edge and innovative rape awareness programs like the current one at UNH were few, but UF had one of the best.

SARS, Sexual Assault Recovery Service, and COAR, Campus Organized Against Rape, were both founded by therapist Claire Walsh in 1981 and 1982, respectively. Throughout the ‘80s, Walsh and COAR representatives spoke on at least a dozen national TV talk shows, supplied information to more than 500 universities and media organizations and served as models for similar programs at other schools.

In the 1988 book titled, “I Never Called It Rape,” one of the first extensive studies of rape on college campuses, COAR was called out as “one of the nation’s most comprehensive programs,” which included a rape-myth quiz, a slide show of sexual stereotypes in the media, and discussions of body language and assertiveness in dating. COAR also made it a point to discuss the societal and cultural attitudes of men, women and relationships that may lead to rape situations as well as ways to enhance general communication between men and women.

Walsh credited COAR’s success to its unique approach to involve both men and women as its target audience. Half of COAR’s members were men.

“We see males as absolutely crucial in helping to change attitudes that are put out by the culture,” Walsh told the Gainesville Sun in 1986. “Women can’t do it by themselves, males can’t do it by themselves — we need to work together.”

However, this nationally recognized and successful program came to an end in 1991. A mess of differing politics, separate budgets and general bureaucracy crippled, defunded and eventually disbanded COAR entirely. SARS was redistributed from the Infirmary, where SARS counselors were able to focus specifically on rape victim counseling, to Mental Health Services, which left rape victims to check in as mental health patients and be randomly assigned to a general counselor, regardless of the counselor’s specialization. Basically, both programs were eliminated

Since COAR and SARS, UF has seen a few half-hearted and not nearly as passionate attempts at rape awareness. The names change almost yearly and are hard to research and keep track of.

“It could change names as the mission evolves and as funding changes,” said Jennifer Stuart, coordinator of STRIVE. “But there is a mandate that any university has to have education on sexual assault. So that will happen.”

That mandate is the Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights of 1992, which requires all federally funded schools to provide sexual assault prevention programs as well as provide information on what to do if an assault occurs and who victims can contact. The mandate is a part of the 1990 Clery Act, named in memory of a sexual assault and murder victim of 1986. The Clery Act also requires every university to publish an annual report of its past three years’ worth of campus crime statistics.

The sexual assault definition used in these reports is “forcible rape,” defined as: “The carnal knowledge of a person forcibly and/or against that person’s will; or not forcibly or against the person’s will where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his/her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity (or because of his/her youth). This offense includes the forcible rape of both males and females.” It also includes “forcible sodomy,” “sexual assault with an object,” and “forcible fondling.”

Between 2008 and 2010, 17 “forcible rapes” were reported at UF. This seems more than a little bit shy of the one in four statistic reported by STRIVE and most rape advocate groups.

“The reality is that these kinds of cases go woefully under-reported,” Loschiavo said.

This past summer, in an effort to increase reporting and awareness, the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent a “Dear Colleague Letter” to universities and school districts nationwide. The letter clarified exactly how Title IX should be interpreted and what misconduct code guidelines to abide by, specifically in sexual misconduct cases. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education or activity.

Though the letter does not have force of law, the 19-page “policy guidance” outlines the standards that will be considered if a sexual assault case in a school or university is investigated by the Office of Civil Rights. But, if the same sexual assault case is brought to state court, the standards may be different.

“State law has some different standards and so the institution now is forced to choose: do we want to lose in state court if an accused appeals and says these regulations are invalid and violate my due process rights, or do we want to lose in an OCR case? That’s really the choice we have,” Loschiavo said.

In light of how few cases of sexual assault are actually reported and prosecuted, the Bringing in the Bystander program aims to reduce the number of victims overall. Loschiavo is optimistic about the new program, though he does think it’s going to take a long time to effect change.

“We’re working against the culture,” he said. “Even when there were minimal consequences to the bystander getting involved, bystanders have chosen not to get involved. As a campus, we’re trying to have a culture shift to empower bystanders to intervene.”

Legal systems, police departments and rape awareness groups can only go so far in prevention and recovery tactics. The Bringing in the Bystander program affirms that encouraging people to speak up is the most effective way to help reduce sexual violence.

Illustration (top) by Susie Bijan.

Many, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the senior Democrat of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), the ranking member of Stearns’ subcommittee, accuse Stearns of having no “predicate that would justify a sweeping and invasive request to Planned Parenthood [who had] not identified any pattern of misuse of federal funds, illegal activity or other abuse that would justify a broad and invasive congressional investigation.” However, Stearns is still hung up on the now infamous “other money” riddle.

“Although Planned Parenthood is barred from using federal funds to perform abortions, these funds are fungible and allow the group to use funds from other sources ostensibly for abortions,” Stearns said in a statement.

Stearns is not only looking out for the well-being of federal money already spent but also for money in the future.

“With a national debt exceeding $14 trillion, funding of Planned Parenthood should be evaluated with other expenditures to reduce the deficit,” Stearns added.

In Planned Parenthood’s fiscal year of 2007-2008, according to their annual report, they received $363.2 million in government grants, which represents about a third of Planned Parenthood’s annual income.

Stearns has also been making headlines with his new investigation into federal loans totaling $535 million made to Solyndra, a failed California-based solar panel manufacturer. This September they filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.

Stearns was quoted as saying the U.S. can’t compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines. When called out directly by President Obama on this statement, Stearns clarified he was referring to cheap labor.

“We should invest in and provide incentives to companies that can exploit our competitive advantage in technology and innovation [...] and not subsidize industries when these other nations have cheaper labor, no environmental or safety standards, less regulation and easy access to raw materials,” Stearns said.

Why waste U.S. money on American workers and companies that actually manufacture a product in the U.S. when it can be done more cheaply in China by exploited underpaid workers in unregulated conditions? What we should really be investing in is developing new technology.

Technology research and development definitely deserve federal funding, especially when it’s for health care for mothers and children, Head Start day care, public education and investing in American companies and laborers. Who these technologists will be in the future, what with a bunch of sick, under-supervised and under-educated children running around these days, is still unknown.

Stearns represents Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, which include parts of Gainesville and Ocala.

Twenty percent of all female college students will experience sexual assault. That’s one in five. The national average for all women is one in six. The percentage for college males is 6 percent.

Title IX works in conjunction with the Jeanne Clery Act of 1990, which requires schools to report three years worth of campus crime every Oct. 1 as well as certain security policies, including sexual assault policies.

UNH, where Biden made his speech, has been nationally recognized as having one of the most progressive rape awareness and prevention programs in the country. UNH has two initiatives that have served as models for other colleges: Know Your Power and Bringing in the Bystander.

Know Your Power is a social marketing campaign encouraging students to intervene when they witness domestic violence or sexual assault. Bringing in the Bystander is an education and awareness program that teaches students through interactive discussion and learning exercises that everyone has a role in ending violence against women.

Beginning January, STRIVE, UF’s rape awareness program, plans to expand into a model based on UNH’s Bringing in the Bystander program.

Bringing in the Bystander is a “90-minute, face-to-face educational program [...] of structured programming, interactive presentations and discussions, that teaches not only statistics, but skills for helping, too,” said Jennifer Stuart, the coordinator of STRIVE.

“It’s a more direct effort to get out the education and prevention,” said Ron Del Moro, a peer educator.

Look for the upcoming full-length article in the Winter issue of The Fine Print.

This issue, as always, comes from our dedicated and talented staff of writers.  We can name all of them on one hand.  Seriously.  A publication, even one as small as ours, cannot sustain itself on a staff that can share one six-pack of beer.  We need the kind of staff that can at least get through an 18-pack without falling down.

We need you to help us.  Not just with getting through cases of beer, but with actual publication stuff.  We get it, you’re busy, you have school and work and a girlfriend/boyfriend/both, things to reblog or tweet about and a social life.  But we do, too.  We do the Fine Print because we get to make something that’s tangible, beautifully presented, informative and investigative and actually fun (sometimes, maybe after a bottle of wine).  We help our writers write, we help each other edit, and we become better at what we do.

If that’s not good enough for you, you can also receive school credit for working with us.   Why would you intern with The Fine Print opposed to another publication in Gainesville?  You will get absolute freedom to do what you want to do.  You won’t be asked to write recycled stories or to censor your viewpoint.  You can walk around town and write whatever the hell you want.  Just do it with purpose. We’ll work with you throughout the whole process of reporting, writing and editing and we won’t stop, literally, until both of us are completely satisfied with the end product.

If you’re not a writer, but you can do something, anything; illustrate or photograph, if you’re a web developer, a designer, a promoter, if you play in a band or have a sick talent for being extremely organized, talk to us.  We are so sparse, your ability to be enthusiastic and dedicated is good enough for us.

The Fine Print offers a chance for you to give a voice to the marginalized, to feature eccentric people and their projects, political or artistic, and to take on popular issues from a new angle.  The Fine Print lets you examine Gainesville from your own perspective and inform our readers of subjects and issues that would otherwise go unnoticed.

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Thanks for your support in the future and in the past,

The Fine Print Staff

He contrasted his plight with the comfortable position women enjoy today. Our government allows women to have all the choice and freedom in the world. We have freedom and control over our own bodies with the right to choose to have an abortion, yet Sen. Paul is left in the dirt. He is denied this same freedom of choice and is forced, punishable by a nasty fine, to use water-conserving and energy-efficient toilets, light bulbs and washing machines.

I don’t usually identify as a feminist. I don’t act or look like the stereotype; I shave my legs, I wear make-up and sometimes I call other girls sluts and whores (sorry, Tina Fey). But Congressmen aren’t making it so easy to continue to make that distinction. So, I’d like to hereby declare myself a feminist.

I am a feminist because I oppose Congress getting inside my you-know-what (I don’t want to offend the Florida Senate who consider “uterus” a dirty, unspeakable word) to tell me how else I, and all women, are being indecent, impulsive or selfish. Can someone please tell me what is indecent, selfish or impulsive about having autonomy over my own body and my own life by deciding when the best time for me to have a baby is? In the words of Tina Fey via Regina George, Congress, you are the nastiest skank bitch I’ve ever met.

Feminists, those ungodly creatures pro-lifers love to rally against, are now demanding from Congressmen (emphasis on men), that women continue to have access to abortions at Planned Parenthood, which is made possible by federal subsidies. Sure, tax payer money isn’t specifically allocated toward abortions, but paying for sexual health education for women and family planning and health care services like HIV testing, pap smears, breast cancer screenings and contraceptives certainly does free up a lot of “other” money that can go toward providing abortions.

Another victory for masculinists (that’s the opposite of feminists, right?) was narrowly won in early April when SB 1744 passed through another round of votes 7-5. This bill would require pregnant women seeking abortions to first have an ultrasound and then listen to a description of the fetus. Graciously, she will not be forced to see the image. Clearly, women are too stupid and flippant to be trusted with a decision as big as abortion. We must first sit her down and go over in painful detail and simple language what a fetus is, what her fetus looks like, and, to be certain, what a baby and abortion even are.

To be fair, once funding is cut from Planned Parenthood she probably won’t know what any of those are anyway since her access to sexual health education, women’s healthcare services and family planning will be limited. The hope is that she will not get an abortion, either because she can’t afford one now that Planned Parenthood is defunded or because she will be so traumatized by the sonogram and rhetoric being forced upon her, that she will save tax payers that expense and will just start a family.

Unfortunately, she won’t be able to send her child to pre-school, an institution that has proven to give children an academic advantage in elementary school, because Head Start, a federally-sponsored program designed to give disadvantaged children and families that opportunity, will be defunded by $1 billion. That woman might then be forced to stay at home with her child, which might prevent her from getting a job. Since she can’t get a job, she might need to go on welfare, which no matter how you feel about it is generally acknowledged to cost tax payers money. That child will then have a Backwards Start, being born into a low-income household without the opportunity of a pre-school environment or planned family situation.

When a woman doesn’t have access to contraceptives, health care or sexual health education, she is at the mercy of her body and those she may choose to share it with; she can’t control the course of her own life. Since contraceptives and abortions were made legal and accessible in the United States, women have been able to significantly reduce the number of children they bear; fewer women marry and those who do, marry later on in life. Consequently, more women pursue a higher education, earn higher incomes, maintain better health and participate in politics.

This “war on women,” this social conservative attack led by male politicians to keep women at bay, to keep us out of the workforce, out of school and essentially out of the entire social sphere, so that we will stay home and carry a baby to term we may or may not have planned for is disgraceful.

Until men are the ones to bleed from their genitals, until men become sacred vessels that carry life, until men are victimized by rape, until men are scrutinized for their clothing and blamed for their situations, until men want to live in a society where there are no women, no sex, no children and no future, I suggest they sit down and shut the fuck up.

This is 2011 and I will not sit idly by while women’s rights are reversed and the glass ceiling is lowered. And neither should you.

One of the first steps in liberating women in oppressed societies is to educate them on contraceptives and reproductive health. When she doesn’t have access to contraceptives, health care or sexual health education, she surrenders her dreams and aspirations to the will of her body and those she shares it with; she is enslaved.

Since contraceptives and abortions were made legal and accessible in the United States, women have significantly been able to reduce the number of children they bear, fewer women marry and those who do, marry later on in life. In correlation with that, more women pursue a higher education, earn higher incomes, maintain better health and participate in politics.

Women’s rights may seem a trite subject to harp on. But the news here is that the progress made for women’s equality is now in jeopardy.

The New York Times, The Nation, Ms. Magazine and The Huffington Post, to name just a few, have called it the “war on women” and even more report women’s rights are “under attack.” Melissa Harris-Perry of the Nation goes so far as to claim this is an attack led by social conservatives to push women out of the social sphere and back into the home.

That may seem extreme, but what else are we led to believe? Regardless of whether or not this is simply another political guise to bring abortion, i.e. the religious agenda, to the forefront of the conservative platform, as some pundits suggest, the fact that it continues to work is troubling. Abortion, and women’s rights, are a general crowd pleaser of a debate, when really this debate should be as obsolete as civil rights.

Attacking low-income women and their access to family planning and reproductive healthcare services does not create jobs. It certainly does not decrease the deficit since unplanned-for-children are more likely to cost money in childcare, welfare, education, and other federally-funded programs, and it does not benefit the future of America, for both mothers and their children.

In 2011, the War and the Attack on Women remains a sad reality in politics. Fortunately, organizing, protesting and voicing your opinion can be as simple as opening up your browser and finding events near you, like Gainesville’s recent Walk for Choice or signing petitions like Planned Parenthood’s petition to let Congress know you are not in support of the bill to defund Planned Parenthood. The Fine Print is dedicated more than ever to remain a resource for local events and issues, including women’s rights.

“We want to show all the bands from out of town a good time and that here’s something new and interesting to do at the Fest,” Evan says.

Each band participating will get a live professional recording, followed by a short interview conducted by Evan Rocha. The interviews will focus on the song they have recorded at Medusa Studios, their musical influence, the Fest, and Gainesville itself. The exclusive content will be available on Grooveshark’s website, giving the bands free promotion as well as promoting Fest 9 in Gainesville. The bands will be personally escorted from the Fest to Medusa Studios, fed by local businesses and, of course, be given plenty of free beer.

Medusa Studios is no stranger to community outreach. Melosh also organized the Music Maker’s Ball at the Venue last month on September 24th. The event encouraged Gainesville’s music community to interact and support one another.

“Dave was really into the idea as soon as he heard that we wanted to [take] what’s going on in Gainesville to a bigger audience.  He was on board immediately,” Evan says.

For Grooveshark, this is a step in a different direction, but not one they haven’t been considering.  Grooveshark aims to sponsor more “Grooveshark Sessions” for bands who come through Gainesville as well as continuing to have a local presence with outreach to Gainesville bands.  This weekend’s Fest sessions is the first attempt.

A few of the bands lined up for Grooveshark Sessions at the Fest are Flatliners, God Damn Doo Wop Band, as well as some local acts like Greenland is Melting and Michael Claytor and His Friends.

“We just want to show the bands some love and that we appreciate them coming to our town,” Evan says.

Look for Grooveshark Session recordings at Grooveshark.com.

The Fest, the annual three-day music festival that invades downtown Gainesville the last weekend in October, is not your average festival. After nine years (Langerado lasted seven years before going defunct, and 2011 is the nine-year anniversary of Bonnaroo), the Fest still manages to have that word-of-mouth, homegrown, grassroots feel. That’s because that’s exactly what it is. There are no corporate-sponsors, no long list of headliners, no big hype and no inflated price tag.

The Fest, like any great revolution, was borne out of the Man just asking to be damned. After attending a College Music Journalism conference and music festival in Virginia, Tony Weinbender and his friends, who ran their college music station, were pissed off and annoyed. There weren’t any bands they liked; it was “industry-run bullshit.” So they started their own fest–The Fest.

Thousands of kids (and moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas, too) travel from all over the world and the US to attend the Fest each year and it’s certainly not because they saw an ad in Rolling Stone or heard about it on the radio. The Fest spends absolutely no money on advertising. They have a trade sponsorship with PBR (so the bands drink for free all weekend) and Alternative Press magazine (the Fest gets a free ad), who are allowed to promote themselves at the venues. Other than that, the Fest operates entirely on a refer-a-friend basis.

“They’re almost like ambassadors,” says Tony Weinbender, founder and organizer of the Fest. “We can see our ticket sales at the end that someone from Duluth came, one person. They’re going back to Duluth and they’re going to tell everyone how much fun they had.”

In order to play at the Fest, all you have to do is send in a demo and apply. These bands, the ones that need to be approved and aren’t invited by the Fest to play, are the midlevel bands.

“I don’t know every band,” Tony says, “and it’s always a nice surprise to get something in the mail, never heard of it, don’t know who they are, and listen to it and be like wow, this is really, really good and to give somebody that chance, too, to come play [...] and we’ve had a lot of good bands that have blown up from that.”

Not to say that the Fest doesn’t get the attention of headlining bands. They do, and frequently, but that’s not what the Fest is about.

“We don’t play into the whole thing of having to get giant massive headliners. I say [to booking agents], look, this is the most we’ve ever paid anybody and that’s what I’m willing to pay and they just laugh and scoff at me and I’m like fine, we don’t need you. And we don’t.”

Not everyone is as eager to be a part of the Fest, however. Some residents of Gainesville are not so pleased to have kids tramping across their lawns and allegedly peeing on them, or to have a curious influx of “crusties” peddling for cash and beer and rummaging through garbage. But some things just come with the territory.

“We can’t stop them from coming,” Tony says. “Best we can do is discourage them from having fun” by increasing hotel security and alerting the police about show times and hours.

The Gainesville Police Department is surprisingly supportive of the Fest and keeps in close contact with Tony to make sure that everything is copacetic when venues and clubs let out and that nothing gets out of hand.

“They could easily be like no, you pay us. You don’t have a zoning license permit for this,” Tony says. “And they’ve never been that way to us.”

However, due to an out of control house party that ended in a tasing last year, many thought the GPD would force the Fest to shut down. Many bands wrote Tony worried the Fest might not continue after what had happened, admitting they played house shows in the past, but wouldn’t do it anymore to ensure the future of the Fest.

Due to safety concerns, house shows will not be permitted by anyone involved with the Fest.

“We’re officially saying to bands that come and play the Fest this year, you are not allowed to play house shows,” says Tony. “I don’t want to have anything to do with house shows, I don’t condone them or organize them.”

If you are a volunteer for the Fest, you are also officially not allowed to throw a house show.

Although house shows were always a highly anticipated aspect the Fest, there are a dozen official venues this year, including the addition of the new larger venue, The Venue, which will cut down on the notoriously long lines at Common Grounds and other midlevel venues, by bumping up the bigger name bands to The Venue.

This year’s Fest is sure to be just as rowdy, drunk, dramatic, crusty and punk rock as Fest 8, so be sure to visit www.festfl.com/fest9 to check out the schedule and buy some tickets.

The Fest takes place in downtown Gainesville October 29th, 30th and 31st.

The Fine Print will be out and about Fest weekend taking pictures and talking to attendees, so be on the watch and come talk to us and you might just see yourself in print or online. See you at the Fest!

Though band practice takes place in a storage unit like most other Gainesville bands, Cassette’s space is unusually clean.

The floor is patched up in a dumpster-dive-turned-Tetris masterpiece, with L- and rectangle-shaped pieces of carpet that cellist Marc Hennessey collected and pieced together. The ground is litter-free and newly vacuumed, cluttered only by cables, power cords, amps and other equipment. Small triangular mountain ranges of foam blocks with vertical valleys match their horizontal partners hanging parallel from across the wall, a trick used in recording studios to improve acoustics.

“Aimee,” says Collin Whitlock, pianist, “When Marc’s bow starts moving, that’s when you start.”

“No, no,” says Aimee Gonzalez, violinist, holding her knees to her chest and smiling. “I’m asking you to give me the signal.”

Aimee wants to hear the song they’re practicing without her and Marc’s string section in the beginning. Collin, a Kanapaha Middle teacher, wearing a white T-shirt on his head like a well-structured turban, is over-explaining it back to her.

The song begins and then abruptly cuts out. Everyone looks at Aimee. Aimee looks up from hugging her knees and Collin laughs.

Despite continuous tangents about drummer Kevin “K-Flow” Clark’s gallon of vodka and water (just water), toothpicks up Collin’s nose and an impromptu jam session of easy listening for the over-40 crowd, this practice is serious business. Cassette is flying to Chicago in a little less than two weeks to record in the famous Engine Studios, recording space to Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Broken Social Scene.

“We are turbo-writing [the new record],” said Samantha Jones, guitarist, vocalist and overall mastermind of Cassette.

In between the banter and teasing, all four progress and collaborate on the songs planned for the upcoming record.

“We definitely relate differently at practice than we do at any other time,” Sam said. “I think we’re a lot more frank with each other, a lot shorter with one another; we’re bossy. But we get shit done.”

“We all know what the song needs to be in the back of our head, and we’re just trying to get to it,” Marc adds.

The current multi-minded Cassette wouldn’t recognize itself in early releases. Five or six years ago, the band was just Samantha Jones and, yes, a cassette player. The idea behind “Cassette” was that she would record “ambiance for the songs” on a cassette player and play it back while she performed live music. At the time, though, Sam was already a member of a few other bands, and Cassette became more of a fun and “simple side project” rather than a full-blown band.

Sam first moved to Gainesville 16 years ago from Pensacola, not for any other reason but to straight-up rock out.

She was drawn to the city by the “Gainesville sound,” which she describes as “that calm, sneakers-and-T-shirt sound that comes from bands like Radon and Less Than Jake and those old school bands.” And of course, she just “loved to play punk rock guitar.” She did end up putting herself through college at UF mostly by happenstance.

Her main interest was the music, and the feeling was mutual. Over the years, Sam has played in notable bands and genres, including Rumbleseat with Chuck Ragan from Hot Water Music and, more recently, the orchestral Deep and Holy Sea alongside Aimee and K-Flow, now fellow members of Cassette.

As other bands and projects fell away, she drew herself closer to Cassette and what she wanted it to be. She realized her cassette player, although beloved for its retro-cred and feminine-sounding name, would have to go. The “feminine anachronism” stayed.

“Whenever I wanted to go on tour, I would just go,” Sam said. “I would take my dog, I would take my best friend, whatever, and I would just get in my car and go and I really liked that it was that simple. But I knew that to get the sound that I wanted, I needed more people.”

So she began to recruit.

Aimee had already been aggressively recruited, practically tricked, into playing in the Deep and Holy Sea by cellist Brian Hennessey (no relation to Marc Hennessey, though strangely both play cello) and drummer David Turbeville, now drummer of Felice Brothers. Aimee, who has since graduated from the School of Music with her bachelor’s in violin performance, was reluctant to join Deep and Holy Sea because she had never improvised and played with a band outside of class before. If it weren’t for Aimee’s unguarded reply of “just bored” to Brian’s, “What are you doing now?” one afternoon, Aimee might never have been caught without an excuse and learned to love an aspect of music she had never experienced before.

“I seriously had no idea how to play without music in front of me, but David was really encouraging,” Aimee said.

Everything Cassette does now, “Aimee dips into gold veneer,” Sam said.

K-Flow was recruited 10 years ago at a house show first as Sam’s friend and then as band mate in Holy Sea.

Since both K-Flow and Aimee were in Deep and Holy Sea, it was a natural transition for them to join Cassette. By now, Cassette had become a “snowball avalanche gaining momentum, getting bigger and creating a gravitational force with the size of it,” Sam said.

Collin, pianist and vocals for Shoddy Beatles, was Cassette’s first pick-him-up and run.

“I was watching them play one night, and I thought, ‘That guy, he will be mine,’” Sam said.

Marc’s pick-up also began with a mutual show. Cassette played a show at Common Grounds with Marc’s band, To All My Dear Friends, but this time Collin was enchanted along with Sam.

“I was sitting by myself and I was writing in my journal when he started playing. I stopped mid-sentence…and I wrote, ‘Oh my God, this guy is ridiculous. He’s really good.’ And then when Sam came in, I grabbed her and I was like, ‘We need this guy!’ and Sam’s like, ‘I know!’” Collin said, nearly jumping forward.

Now fully assembled with its collection of precision, genius, gold veneer, beat master flow and country-tinged mastermind, Cassette fits into their own genre of “somber pop.”

“I wanted to draw everyone together [because] I really just wanted to have a sound,” Sam said. “The same way when you smell a strawberry, you know it’s a strawberry. [I wanted] something going on beneath the actual songs, [where] there’s this cohesiveness that brings it all together that when you hear it, it’s distinct even if you don’t see it or don’t hear the name of it. That’s what’s important to me.”

Cassette has grown from a small tape deck to a five-piece “dark and glittery” ensemble mixing backgrounds and genres to create melodic pop with a somber twist.

The acoustic guitar and trombone may seem like an unlikely pairing for a band, but the combination is somewhat organic, mixing Gainesville ska and Gainesville punk to create Coffee Project’s unique sound. And though the two-piece outfit didn’t plan on becoming a band, let alone staying a two-piece line-up, it turns out that a trombone and a guitar were all they needed.

In yet another Gainesville homage, where so many great things begin and end, Coffee Project began on a back porch at a house party.

“There were a bunch of people over there [at the party], and we just nerded out,” guitarist Jake Crown said. “We wrote a song in his little room, which we call a studio, which is as big as a closet… and that was really fun.”

Jake Crown, of punk bands Rehasher and Hometeam, and trombonist Buddy Schaub, of PB&J, Black Ice and most notably Less Than Jake, originally met in the late ’90s when Jake was recording in Roger Manganelli’s, also of Less Than Jake, studio with Hometeam. A few years later, Roger’s side punk band, Rehasher, formed with Jake as the drummer. But it wasn’t until almost a decade after their first meeting that Jake would get together with another Less Than Jake member, Buddy, to form their punk ska duo.

Although they didn’t consider themselves an official put-together band just yet, their unique sound of acoustic guitar, folk punk lyrics and vocals on top of trombone melodies certainly sets them apart from other Gainesville-based bands. Jake’s lyrics describing heartbreak, growing up and moving on, and the general hopes and disappointments of life, are cleverly written and catchy. But the lyrics about ungrateful cats, the abundance of 21st birthdays every time you go out and living in a small town with a main street are especially entertaining to Gainesville locals, as well as the direct invocation of Gainesville itself several times in different songs.

“My songs are honest,” Jake said. “I don’t know how to write fairy tales…There have been times when it’s hard to live in this small, little town and find work. I’ve left a few times and come back, and that’s just what it is.”

But it took Vinnie Fiorello, drummer of Less Than Jake, for Buddy and Jake to realize this was more than just their own pet side project. Vinnie wanted to put the first Coffee Project record out on his new vinyl-and-art-based label, Paper + Plastick.

“That made it easier to have someone say, well, I like your band, and I want to put it out on vinyl, [and we said] OK, we’re going to do it for real,” Jake said.

Finding the time to practice and record the songs wasn’t as easy, however. Jake works full time as a sous chef in a fine dining restaurant, while Buddy keeps infinitely busy with his full-time commitment to Less Than Jake, as well as with various video editing projects.

It was in the early mornings when Jake and Buddy found themselves together, downing coffee, writing, practicing, recording and just “powering through” together in Buddy’s home studio where they recorded the first 10″ and EP. From those sunrises and pots of coffee is where the name “Coffee Project” was first conceived.

“Buddy laughs at me because [coffee] is like my nemesis,” Jake said. “If it were a real thing, we would be called Beer Project because I love beer more than coffee.”

Jake wrote enough material for their first eight-song 10″ vinyl record titled “Easy Does It,” released in January 2009. They followed up in June 2009 with their two-song EP simply called “Pickle.” Both were released on the art-focused label Paper + Plastick.

Since forming in 2007, Coffee Project have performed at Fest 7 and 8, as well as this year’s Harvest of Hope Fest. Jake became involved with the Harvest of Hope Fest last year when he volunteered his time to manage a stage and do some sound work, in addition to performing with bands Hometeam and Rehasher. Buddy also performed in last year’s Fest with Less Than Jake. This year, Coffee Project played a set on the Paper + Plastick stage the last day of the festival.

This spring, Coffee Project are releasing their first full-length album titled “Moved On.” Once again, “Moved On” will be released by Paper + Plastick, a label founded with an appreciation for the physical qualities of art, like vinyl, CDs, and liner art. The album art for “Moved On” was done by Peter Wonsowski, who also did their previous album art for “Easy Does It.”

“He is a good friend of ours, which makes him really understand what we are looking for,” said Jake of his relationship with Peter.

The physical CD for “Moved On” will include an art spread by Peter, which is previewed as a banner on the Coffee Project MySpace page.

To promote their new release, Coffee Project will be going on an East Coast tour with labelmates Blacklist Royals and Greenland is Melting, who also just debuted their first Paper + Plastick release. As outlined on the Coffee Project MySpace page, a few of the venues aren’t really venues at all, but houses or warehouse spaces, not for lack of available space to play, but more for the all-ages shows, an accessible intimate space and a BYOB atmosphere that can’t be offered by any bar or traditional venue.

“It’s really hard to find all ages venues in big cities,” Jake said. “So for example, instead of playing Pittsburgh, we’re playing in a little town right outside of Pittsburgh where we have an art space and so we’ll play there…and one thing you know is great people and a full house are fun to do.”

The spring tour kicks off on May 12 at the 1982 bar with NoMore, Lindsey Mills and Greenland is Melting.

The three-day Harvest of Hope Foundation Music and Arts Fest is back for its second year, March 12

The Harvest of Hope Foundation, a “non-profit organization that provides financial, educational, and service-oriented aid to migrant farm workers all over the country,” according to its web site, was founded by Phillip Kellerman in 1997.

Kellerman’s initial exposure to issues concerning migrant farm workers came from his involvement in 1989 with the ESCORT Migrant Education Program at the State University of New York in Oneonta, where he answered phone calls for the National Migrant Education Hotline. Kellerman says he received hundreds of calls from about 25 states, including Florida, from migrant farm workers seeking emergency aid for “vehicle repairs, housing, utilities, clothing, food, medical services and helping their children in schools.”

“I soon discovered there was not much federal, state or local help in these states. There was no help out there,” Kellerman said. “That’s what led me to set up the Harvest of Hope Foundation.”

In 2004, Kellerman moved to Gainesville.

“Before I left, a good friend of mine I worked with in Oneonta contacted her friend, Ryan Murphy,” Kellerman said. “He really liked the foundation and what I was doing.”

Murphy, who was getting his master’s degree in bilingual education at UF, worked in an afterschool literacy program called Libros de Familia, which promoted literacy to migrant children in Alachua County. The program received funding from the HOH Foundation to buy books, fund afterschool workshops and get UF students involved.

“I met with Phil, and I was excited about what he did [with the Foundation] and asked what I could do to help raise funds,” Murphy said. “I worked at No Idea Records going to school, and once I got involved with Phil, I wanted to bring the two worlds together. Knowing Harvest of Hope needed money, the most immediate thing I could do was to put on benefit shows.”

Murphy thought some bands he knew would be interested because “their politics would fall in line with helping workers and social justice issues.” Murphy asked his friends in Against Me! to play a benefit show, and “they took the ball and ran with it,” he said.

“They did a series of shows around the country and raised $18,000. It got us motivated and inspired Phil to realize other avenues of fundraising.”

“We just thought there was a really good connection between grassroots, alternative and progressive musicians and the grassroots work the Harvest of Hope Foundation was doing,” Kellerman said.

While setting up a benefit show for Against Me! and some other local bands with Ryan Detera of Café Eleven in St. Augustine, Detera mentioned he had “just become the general manager of the Fairgrounds and why don’t we do three days. I laughed because it seemed ridiculous compared to what I wanted to do.  He said, ‘You do the Fest in Gainesville. I think you would have the ability to do it here,’” Murphy said.

As a non-profit organizing an event of that size, HOH was eligible for a grant from the county. They applied and received $50,000, the largest grant ever awarded. The money comes from tax revenue received through tourism, which is then allocated to aid organizations seeking to do special events in the county.

“Once I got together with everybody who works on the Fest and motivated everyone and got them on my team, we couldn’t look back,” Murphy said.

Through both Detera and Murphy’s connections, they began to assemble the 2009 line-up for the first HOH Fest.

“I know a lot of bands, punk bands, through No Idea, and Ryan [Detera] knows smaller indie bands through Café Eleven. He was also booking through the Fairgrounds, so he was working with agents [of national bands] as well,” Murphy said.

They came up with a diverse selection of punk, indie, hip-hop, folk and acoustic.

Last year, although 7,800 tickets were sold and 17,000 people came through the gates, nothing was raised. Kellerman explains it was a first-year test, and “most first-year tests lose a ton of money.”

But Kellerman is not disappointed with last year’s turnout.

“Even though we didn’t make money, the off-shoots from the fest were wonderful. We had a lot of bands, subsequent to the fest, doing their own benefits for the Foundation, locally and around the country. Was it worth our effort? Yes!”

This year Kellerman hopes to see double the attendance of last year and give a stronger focus to the HOH Foundation cause.

“The first year we just wanted to create a general awareness of what it was all about.  This year there will be a much stronger focus on what HOH is about, with a strong emphasis at tables and the non-profit section that works with the migrant farm workers.  There will be a double CD of last year’s event available, as well as a documentary of the first year that incorporates the music and the message” on sale at the festival.

The CD is currently available now at fail-saferecords.com and interpunk.com. Three-day passes to the HOH Festival are available at harvestofhopefest.com for $49.50.

Photos courtesy of Morgan Bellinger – www.movephotography.com/ – and Celia Roberts – www.celiaroberts.com