{"id":2405032,"date":"2026-05-06T19:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2405032"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:43:13","slug":"highlights-windsors-what-doth-life-goes-nonprofit-for-music-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/highlights-windsors-what-doth-life-goes-nonprofit-for-music-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Highlights: Windsor&#8217;s What Doth Life goes nonprofit for music support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_NKDzNiYgkYP?ui_title_icon=headphones&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.6\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Since its founding, in 2010, the Windsor-based music cooperative What Doth Life has been a scrappy, shoestring outfit. With little more than know-how and perseverance, the collective\u2019s musicians have recorded a slew of albums and played dozens and dozens of shows.<\/p>\n<p>The latest example of this character trait is also a bid toward greater stability and influence that\u2019s already bearing fruit. There are more shows by local bands, and What Doth Life last week released the largest compilation record it\u2019s ever produced, a benefit for the ACLU of Vermont.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a busy last couple of weeks,\u201d Brendan Dangelo, one of the musician-organizers behind What Doth Life, said in a phone interview. \u201cI\u2019ve played a show every weekend,\u201d and he\u2019ll play another on Saturday with The Pilgrims at Sawtooth Kitchen in Hanover.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>After last September\u2019s What Doth Rumble, a two-day festival featuring more than 30 bands at the Main Street Museum, the collective found that it had money left over. It wasn\u2019t a huge sum, around $2,000, but it was enough to put into organizing more shows and making sure bands got paid for them.<\/p>\n<p>To fund the Rumble, the WDL organizers raised donations through the Main Street Museum, a nonprofit. Dangelo and Joie Finley, a former longtime volunteer at the museum, realized the music collective could fund more opportunities for up-and-coming bands if it incorporated as a nonprofit. Finley did the paperwork and What Doth Life announced last month that it is now a 501(c)(3) organization.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>There isn\u2019t likely to be much outward change, except that What Doth Life members plan to maintain their current level of activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nonprofit gives us a little more structure,\u201d Dangelo said. Its seven-member board, which consists of six local musicians who have recorded with and played shows through What Doth Life, and Finley, the only non-musician, will be able to deliberate a bit more thoughtfully on the collective\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nonprofit lets us think about how we can build on stuff that we\u2019ve done,\u201d Dangelo said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a reminder that this rock\u2019n\u2019roll outfit is run by grownups with day jobs and children and roles in their community. Dangelo is on the Windsor Planning Commission and Davis McGraw, another board member, is on the Mount Ascutney School Board.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>As the Upper Valley\u2019s arts infrastructure has grown over the past three decades, bands recording and playing live music have been an outlier. The landscape of small venues is broad, but the funding is not deep.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s beginning to change a bit, even as music venues are undergoing a period of crisis elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Phish\u2019s WaterWheel Foundation makes grants to Vermont nonprofits, Finley said, and a new nonprofit, the Massachusetts-based Audeville Society, made a grant to support the Rumble last year. <\/p>\n<p>What Doth Life is working on a presentation to take to donors, Finley said. Funding will go toward what the collective has always done, help bands make, record and perform new music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a gap and we\u2019re hoping to fill it,\u201d Finley said.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, What Doth Life is considering other initiatives. It won\u2019t hold a Rumble this year, Dangelo said, but might hold classes or workshops musicians can take and will look into development of a dedicated practice space. And there will probably be a musical showcase sometime in September or October, but not on the scale of the Rumble, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The most recent project is \u201cSolidarity,\u201d the compilation album to support the ACLU. Released last week, it\u2019s available on Bandcamp, a music-sharing website. The best way to access it is to donate to the ACLU of Vermont in any amount, then email a photo of your receipt to info@whatdothlife.com to get and access code to the recording on Bandcamp, Kiel Alarcon, who spearheaded the project, said.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>He came up with the idea in February, when Minneapolis was teeming with ICE officers. At the same time, Chodus, the Claremont-based What Doth Life band, came out with <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9Cv3buDS4Gk\">a song titled \u201cAsh,\u201d<\/a> a brief, incendiary protest anthem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSearching around for other music, I just noticed people were making protest-y\u201d songs, Alarcon said.<\/p>\n<p>He put out a call to musicians and received 32 submissions, many from bands he\u2019d never heard of. \u201cI listened to them all and they all ended up on there,\u201d Alarcon said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSolidarity\u201d ranges across the genre landscape, from punk to blues, folk, ska and straight-up rock.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple What Doth Life bands contributed, include The Pilgrims, who headline a show Saturday night at Sawtooth Kitchen. Joining them are the South Royalton band Bull &amp; Prairie and OWL, a relatively new band out of Windsor.<\/p>\n<p>With more activity from local bands, the Upper Valley appears to be bucking a trend that has seen multiple music venues close or struggle in the Burlington area, including such storied outposts as Nectar\u2019s and Radio Bean. On the other hand, beyond the Main Street Museum, the Upper Valley has few music venues durable enough to call \u201cstoried.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The best way to follow the new nonprofit\u2019s shows and recordings, Dangelo said, is to keep an eye on <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.whatdothlife.com\/\">whatdothlife.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Books<\/h3>\n<p>Congratulations to Corinth-based writer Sasha Hom on winning a Vermont Book Award for fiction for her debut novella,\u201dSidework.\u201d Her publisher, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/blacklawrencepress.com\/books\/sidework\/\">Black Lawrence Press<\/a>, says \u201cSidework\u201d is \u201cabout a homeless Korean adoptee and mother of four.\u201d Set in northern California, it takes place during the protagonist\u2019s Sunday shift waiting tables at a cafe tucked away in the redwoods. Hom is herself a Korean adoptee. The book awards were presented in a ceremony on Saturday in Montpelier.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source vnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since its founding, in 2010, the Windsor-based music cooperative What Doth Life has been a scrappy, shoestring outfit. With little more than know-how and perseverance, the collective\u2019s musicians have recorded a slew of albums and played dozens and dozens of shows. The latest example of this character trait is also a bid toward greater stability [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2405033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[439067,469981,469982,379884,22672,22477,469983,469984,379891,469985],"class_list":["post-2405032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-claremont-nh","tag-corinth-vt","tag-entertainment-highlights","tag-hanover-nh","tag-latest-news","tag-live-music","tag-south-royalton-vt","tag-what-doth-life","tag-white-river-junction-vt","tag-windsor-vt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Highlights-Windsors-What-Doth-Life-goes-nonprofit-for-music-support.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2405034,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405032\/revisions\/2405034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}