Geoff Wilbur, Publisher/Editor/Writer

My Music Journalism Background

I was a widely published music journalist from 1989 until 2003, covering almost all styles of music, including nearly a decade as a publisher of my own family of magazines, the various editions of Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter.  I then placed my writing career on hiatus until launching this website, Geoff Wilbur’s Music Blog, in 2015.

Staff Writer and Contributing Writer Roles:

From 1989 through the mid-1990s I wrote for a variety of publications before focusing solely on Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter. I wrote for:

• The Boston University Daily Free Press weekly entertainment section, the Muse, 1989-1991
• Worcester-based regional College Monthly, 1989-1994, eventually as Music Director
  • Continued as it became part of CollegeBound, then CollegeBound.Net in 1997/98
• Boston Rock, for two or three years beginning in 1990
• New Jersey-based Tough Tracks magazine, 1990-91
• The Mighty Decibel sometime in the early/mid-‘90s
• Lansing, Michigan-based The Capital Times for a few years starting in 1992
• My own family of publications, the various editions of Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter, 1993-2003

Layout/Editing:

I did layout and editing for the Capital Area Blues Society’s Blues Ambassador newsletter in Lansing, Michigan for a couple years, 1997-1999.

Magazine Publisher (and Editor and Writer):

In 1993, I launched Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter.  The web page detailing GWRN can still be found here on my personal website.  It was headquartered in East Lansing, Michigan 1993-1998, in Newport, Rhode Island 1998-2002, and in Johnston, Rhode Island 2002-2003.

GWRN was a family of quarterly publications, with each edition targeting a different geography (or, later, segment of the music industry). I published 98 print issues of Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter, beginning with print editions in Grand Rapids and Lansing, Michigan. In 1994, I added the Industry Edition, featuring only independent and unsigned bands; it was a by-mail-only edition that was read by people in the music industry. In 1995, I began publishing online, originally an extension of one of my local editions that eventually evolved into an Online-only edition. In 1997, I eliminated the Grand Rapids Edition and added the Country Music Industry Edition. The last Lansing Edition was published in 1999, replaced with a “Street” Edition that was published until early 2001. The last Industry Editions were published in 2002, with the final Online Edition appearing during the winter of 2002/2003.

At that point, my non-music career had grown to the point I was unable to devote enough time to keep GWRN going. Thus began more than a decade of hiatus.

My Return (First on Twitter, and now Geoff Wilbur’s Music Blog):

I began discovering new music again in earnest in 2013 and tweeting about it here. This began my journey back, culminating in my return to music journalism with the launching of Geoff Wilbur’s Music Blog in October 2015.

My writing career is also detailed here on my personal website, including more detail about the various editions of Geoff Wilbur’s Renegade Newsletter.

How to Request Reviews

I’ve created a contact page you can use to send e-mails to me. Alternately, feel free to contact me via Twitter. (If it’s obvious from your Twitter profile you’re a musician, I’ll follow you back and then we can start our discussion via private message.)

If I or any of my writers fail to get back to you when you reach out to us, please cut us some slack. We get contacted with new music so much, we’re unable to reply to everyone – it would consume all of our available time and more if we tried, and we wouldn’t have time to write reviews. So if you don’t hear from us, give us a month or two and try again. And be kind. We’re just people with other day jobs and outside lives doing this because we love it, even though we really don’t have enough time.