A good while ago, wayyyy back in 2025 I got to sit down with Stirling Archer. That's not actually his last name but I went with it as soon as he said Stirling. I am sure most people here know him as the guy who runs The Listening Room or Stirling Myles.

I first started talking to him at the end of 2024 when I made a comment on a post. I forget the artist's name but he had a listening room shoot at the Lynx and I thought that was pretty amazing. Then he came and asked me to come shoot a show. I made it to a show in January, it was at the Lynx and the two artists were Laura Gibson and Thymn. Now up to this point my experience with shooting music has been going to rock, punk, and metal shows. In the pits dodging elbows and kicks. Stirling introduced me to a music venue where the biggest thing I needed to avoid was someone's view or my camera being too loud.

Stirling made the move from Canada to Gainesville, while some might question that choice I think we are all happy to have him here. It is hard to judge that move because he did come down here for family, and since he has been he also met his wife. So not only have we been lucky to have him, it sounds like the move was a good deal for him too.

Stirling explained his background as a touring musician of nine years led him to create the Listening Room. Alameda the band was based out of Portland and even toured Europe. What he really loved was hosting living room shows though, hosting was his way of connecting to people. Taking the music to a bare bones, intimate location. Now that I have been to a few of these shows I can say it really is intimate, even if the listening room isn’t in someone's personal home, it's the next step up.

Now I don’t really post a lot of quotes but I am going to leave you with two here that I really feel not only encapsulate Gainesville, but also the man who cares and pays attention enough to see it.

"The constant thing that remains the same here is the very like DIY ethic here and very collaborative. So, like if somebody has an idea, people really rally around that idea."

"Whenever Gainesville has a nice thing, there's always a little bit of that Gainesville grit to it... it looks really nice in front, but there's like a little bit of masking tape on the back holding it together. And that's also beautiful because we use the resources that we have.”