Darrin In Tunes: A Painful, Often Criminal, Musical History of Your Host

Darrin Snider started out in the Indianapolis Music Scene in the mid 1980's as the keyboardist for an ambitious, over-eager prog/metal garage band called "Sapphyre" and personally takes credit for breaking up the last of the Rush, Journey, Boston, and 80's metal cover bands in a 200-mile radius of the the city. Due to an accidental overdose of Riboflavin as a child, he possesses the uncanny ability to see ADSR envelopes and read raw midi code the way Tank reads the Matrix. Seeing no realistic way to purchace groceries on a regular basis with these unique, but limited superpowers, he attended Indiana University with the traditional American dream of getting a computer science degree and trying to channel it into a career in audio technology of some sort. During this time, he fed his thirst for music by jamming with a plethora of different bands and players in almost every conceivable style of music, and taking every music course he could that didn't require him to change his major -- music appreciation, music theory, music composition, music history, music education, classical, jazz, blues, rock ... and so on. As a natural consequence, he left Bloomington with a love for almost all forms of music, a head filled with far too much musical trivia, and an album collection that spanned nearly 2000 titles. (CD's were something of a new technology back then, and MP3's wouldn't appear for another decade, so imagine how hard it was to cram all of that in the back of a 1979 Camaro.)

Sapphyre -- Circa 1986

Following college, Darrin joined a couple of short-lived bands you probably wish you had never heard, but otherwise kept his chops up by composing original music -- mostly Eno-esque soundscapes and ambient background music for web sites, as well as a solo instrumental CD in the style of Mike Oldfield that was never completed (though portions of it became the theme and transitional music you hear during the show). His only acheivement of note during this era was his limited contribution to his good friend Neil Marsh's score for the amateur sci-fi film "Time Rift." (Editor's note -- Rembmber: you can still buy the soundtrack CD from the website which features a full-length composition by Darrin as a bonus track!)

Time Rift: Yes, he's still plugging those stupid four notes!

In 2005, while the co-owner a small startup software company in Columbus, Darrin discovered podcasting during his lengthy commutes to the office and became obsessed with the concept of "new media". Though he toyed with the idea of doing a podcast of his own for months, he wasn't sure what he had enough passion for to justify the time and effort required to produce a regular show. Fate took a hand when radio station WKLU changed formats (as they do every couple of weeks it seems) and dropped "The Whiskey Brothers Homegrown Rock Show" -- of which Darrin had been a huge fan, often attending their live broadcasts. With the loss of that show, almost all support for local, non-corporate music had disappeared from terrestrial radio in Indianapolis. This was a severe injustice! This was a void that needed to be re-filled! And, most importantly, this was finally something worth investing personal time and money in -- because beer, music, and generally cool people would surely be involved.

Within a few months, the Indianapolis In-Tune Podcast was born.

The first official show was recorded in April of 2006 and featured a very nervous, and slightly drunk, host, embarassingly bad production values, but some great music from local singer/songwriter Brian Deer who was extremely patient, candid, and despite everything gave a great interview. (You think that was rough? You should hear the two unrelased pilots that preceeded it.) Fortunately, within nine or ten episodes, the podcast finally found it's voice and settled into a bit of a rhythm, though a hectic professional and personal life makes production dates somewhat irregular these days.

Recording Indy In-Tune On Location -- January 2007

Most recently, Darrin has continued his streak of breaking up bands by sitting in briefly with The Fabulous Huckleberries and even being declared a full member of the band just a few short weeks before their collapse (making him sort of the "Billy Preson" of that group). He later did session work on the abandoned debut CD from "Into the Mystic" (making him sort of the "Ian Stewart" of that group), and performing on stage with the first half-dozen incarnations of it's rotating-lineup offshoot, "Blue Tear," (making him sort of the "John Lord" of that group). Soon after, he decided that the greatest service he could perform for the Indianapolis Music Scene was to retire from public performance and never play with other musicians again, though rumor has it that he is the super-secret keyboardist and covert manager of at least one local band, still does session work and occasional fill-ins for groups here and there, and is looking forward to potentially returning to his progressive/experimental roots with a "still-in-the-planning-stages" project called "Snapfish."

While not quite "Fabulous," Darrin returned to performance as an honorary "Huckleberry" in September of 2006

One of many "Blue Tear" incarnations -- April 2007

Darrin curently lives in the suburbs of Fishers with his newlywed wife (a classically-trained painist) and five cats (none of whom have any musical aspirations) and continues to sporadically produce episodes of Indy In-Tune as well as running several other websites in the Boasphere including indymoonlighters.com, indydivorcesupport.com, indybloggers.com, indypodcasters.com, indysnoggers.com, indysinglesclub.com, dinnerwithgeeks.com, his personal real-time mobile blog at lungbarrow.com, and a few other, lesser-known secret projects that he won't admit to publicly ... however, if you ever had any aspirations of getting into podcasting yourself, contact him about those -- there might be a spot for you.