The Official State of Electric City Creative

After long last! Greetings, all. If you are following us on Facebook or reading the Hot Ticket, you know that Electric City Creative has not been entirely inactive over the past year, despite the lack of updates on this site. What we have done is shift focus. Because you know that we are a staff of two (Sara Habein and Tyson Habein), our various other creative and professional endeavors have kept us from being able to properly devote our attention to even a quarterly magazine publishing schedule.

Tyson is currently managing two musicians: Joe Ryan and Ryan David Johnson, in addition to working on his own art and poetry. Sara is writing for Persephone Magazine and Word Riot, as well as writing her usual book reviews over at Glorified Love Letters. She is also editing a novel.

We also published a collection of flash fiction and photography, Infinite Disposable, last year. It is available for purchase through the Nouveau Nostalgia page and also at Powell's Books. Roughly 50 copies remain, so when they're gone, they're gone.

So that's what we're doing personally. Under the banner of Electric City Creative, we have sent the magazine off to hibernate. We're not saying we'll never publish another magazine, only that it's on hold while we concentrate on community arts organization and awesome party-throwing. If you've been paying attention at all, you know we've started a new (nearly) monthly showcase: Magnificent Seven.

Sponsored by Electric City Creative, hosted by Joe Ryan, and with assistance from other local businesses, Magnificent Seven brings together (up to) seven different performers, a handful of visual artists, free food, door prizes and a bar (not free, sorry), all for $5. So far, the event has been at the Montana Actors' Theater, but with the warm weather approaching, we will be moving to the Machinery Row patio. The next Magnificent Seven showcase will be in June on the Machinery Row patio, as we use the month of May to regroup and make the transition. The showcase will still be all-ages.

Past performers have included Dan Dubuque, Ryan David Johnson (once on his own, and once with drummers Evin Mitchell and Josh Wilkinson, under the name "Ghost in Stereo"), Jeffrey Scolley, Saif Alsaegh, Hell City Kitty, The Helligans, The Lucky Valentines, Madison Johnson, Emily Busby, Risa Alvarez, Joe Ryan with Melanie Hauer, and oodles more.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the longterm potential of this showcase. We believe that by providing a variety of performers and pairing them with visual art, we can show the public just how much Great Falls has to offer, in addition to making all these different creative endeavors more accessible. Our original mission, even with the magazine, has always been to show that enjoying art isn't scary or necessarily high-brow, and that punk rock can co-exist with classical. So far, the response to our first three showcases has been good, and we thank you for coming.

In other Electric City Creative news, we will also be presenting other events around Great Falls, outside of Mag 7. They might be poetry, music, art auctions, or anything else that strikes our fancy. We will let you know as they are scheduled.

Because of all these different events, this site will be updated far more frequently as we try to keep everyone in the loop in as many promotional venues as possible. Be sure to follow us on both Facebook and Twitter (where our username is still @ElectricCityMag, but ElectricCityCreative is too long, so for now, it stays that way). The Facebook page will probably update more often, if we're honest.

Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to seeing you out and about.