Ghost Canyon, Denver’s premiere DIY experimental music fest, recently concluded its 4th year haunting the streets of South Broadway. This year, the festivities kicked off on Thursday August 27 at HQ with local legend musicians Ryan Wong and Sun Swept, and phenomenal artists Kathryn Mohr and Holy Suns. But before these talents graced the stage with their music, Wax Trax moderated a panel on the use AI in the DIY scene.
Esteemed panel guests included Andy Weber from Smashed Plastic (a Chicago independent pressing plant), Chuck Coffey from Denver’s Snappy Little Numbers label, Lauren Beecher from Denver’s Power Goth Recordings, Matty Clark, owner of the Hi-Dive, and Derik Hendrickson from Braeburn Records, a label in Fort Collins. The panel was moderated by Wax Trax’s Delaney Schoenfeldt.
You’re welcome to listen to the panel recording, kindly uploaded to the Internet Archive by Lance Stack. While the full transcript is the size of a New Yorker long form think piece, we’ve previewed a segment below.
Delaney Schoenfeldt of Wax Trax Records (DS): Does AI, to any of you guys, have a time and a place in the DIY workflow? Like-
Lauren Beecher of Power Goth Recordings (LB): No.
DS: Fast answer.
Andy Weber of Smashed Plastic (AW): Yeah, well, I'll answer just basing it off of that. It does work well as a tool, but when you use it for art creation, then that's where you've crossed that line.
So yes, doing the, you know, "Okay, my bleed line's a little bit over and I don't wanna take, you know, two hours to figure this out," yeah, AI's great for that. But, I mean-
LB: Do we have faith in AI to interpret layers?
AW: No.
LB: So, yeah, it's out.
AW: No, they can get it wrong. I mean, it’s not there yet, right? But it does save time in certain spots, I think. But when it comes to...the whole discussion of this panel, it really comes down to artist creation, right? It comes down to making art. And when you're just asking a computer to make it for you, that's where we lie in the problem.
You know, in Chicago, I do see a lot of... not a lot, but I do... It's very easy to identify an AI concert flyer. I think we all can do that. And then, 'cause I do DJ nights, and I was like, "Oh, cool, I don't have to ask anybody. I'll try this." And then I did it, and I was like… I didn't use it. But then I realized everybody else I saw kinda had one that looked exactly like that flyer. So, you can identify it pretty quick.
Chuck Coffey of Snappy Little Numbers (CC): I’d be interested to be a fly on, on the wall, like, in the early '90s and see what a panel might be talking about with, uh, you know, kind of placing a collage with above photography for album art versus using Adobe on the computer. It might have been kinda sacrilegious to a lot of people back then.
I will say that trying to do all your art just with AI is, like, that's no bueno. But, sometimes people might not have access or the skill with something like Adobe, and maybe they do just need to change a file from a JPEG to a PDF or something like that. But I will say it's definitely a slippery slope. I think it still comes down to the motives of the user as to whether it's, like, really good or bad.
LB: I mean, I have a couple thoughts. I was talking with a friend recently about, how like, I've been using Photoshop since I was 15 years old, right? And there's always been the content aware tool. Let’s say you need to cut something out of a photo, and you need to fill it in with background that's already there. Like, that tool has just always been in Photoshop, right? And so now in the year 2026, there are a lot of people who might be like, "Oh, yeah, that's AI."
It's just kind of classic machine learning that was just in the software anyway, right? And I think that kind of stuff, it's like, there's a line, right? I don't know exactly where it is, but stuff like that, obviously useful, right? And it's just part of the process. But I guess getting into the greater kind of, workflow stuff of what we all do…I don't know. Very few people in DIY are as organized as you might want them to be.
And also, I've been booking a tour the last couple months, right? I'm in, like, various email threads, various Instagram messages. I got, like, a million texts going. I think one kind of through-line of what we all do is, you have to be ready to just constantly pivot, right? Like, deadlines change, and so many factors change. And I do not think AI could keep up with that. You know what I mean? We've all seen, you've Google searched something and you've gotten an AI search result, and it's like, "That's not what I was talking about at all."
It's like, I just have zero trust in that, and also me using an AI tool for that kind of thing isn't gonna inform other people. I'm not gonna know if they were informed because I've gotten a computer responding. You know what I mean? It just seems way too rife with potential massive issues.
So to me, I'm good.
CC: No, that makes a ton of sense. Especially I think when you're talking DIY stuff, you still have to have the humanity, otherwise you're not really doing it yourself.
LB: Did anyone have the Fake Problems shirt from like the year 2006? The “you're not DIY unless you're Amish.” Yeah. We're just building on that.
DS: Yeah, kind of on your note about the search results, even when I was preparing for this panel, I was realizing how a part of my daily life AI suddenly is…I never made the choice for that to happen. In the summary search results or emails now have generative text that I can just click, "Oh, great, that sounds good. Send." And at some level it is... it makes things faster, yeah, but you are trading a little bit of humanity. So it's interesting to hear everyone's takes.
CC: I could definitely see, too, with booking a tour, like Lauren's talking about, if you are using those summaries… it's already hard enough sometimes to get clear answers from booking. Like, if you're not actually reading the email and writing it, then they're gonna be expecting you on a Tuesday and you show up on a Thursday kind of thing.
Matty Clark of Hi-Dive (MC): I attended the National Independent Venue Association annual conference this last June, which is a brag. Not really. It was very boring. But there was a keynote speaker by a guy named Cory Wong, who's in a band called Vulfpeck. And he was very arrogant, but it was an interesting talk. And he talked about how he had an agent called Somebody Pinkus, and the whole crowd like, "Oh, Pinkus. We all know Pinkus." Like, a lot of industry people.
But this guy, Cory Wong, he was on a long flight, and he was a coder, and he could write AI stuff. And he basically made his agent's job a PinkusGPT, where he could put in the dates that he wanted to tour, the venues he wanted to go to. It could collate all his offers that he had coming in, previous offers, how many, you know, Spotify plays or whatever he's getting, BandsInTown links he's getting from each city. And he could just basically streamline his entire booking agent's job through one program. And it was kind of a scary thing to think about because on our level, we would never do that.
Like, Hi-Dive is so relationship based, we would never put software into booking our shows. But I bet we're gonna see a lot of that, especially at bigger levels. But when you're talking about DIY, that whole thing is just personal, interpersonal connections and the people you know, and like, "I know this band in this town," and, you know, people hit up Hi-Dive all the time, "Hey, we played with these guys when we were in Chicago. We'd love to throw them a show. They're coming to town." That kind of thing, I think, is always gonna be there, and the robots will never take that part of it away.
DS: Absolutely. I mean, you guys have mentioned the various ways you've seen people outsource DIY jobs or parts of jobs to AI. Is there anything in, say, 10 years from now that you could see just being completely AI and that being the status quo for the DIY workflow?
AW: I mean, in my industry, yes, 100%. I mean, there are… let me back up. The vinyl industry had no research and development in it, you know, for like 30 years, which actually saved it in many ways. We basically have a machine that is, you know, it's highly technically, logically advanced, but it's still basically the same machine they were using in the '60s, in the '50s to make vinyl.
I think there are a lot of people out there right now trying to figure out how to throw more and more technology at the vinyl business, and it's gonna be really interesting to see. And we're just sitting there going, "No, we're gonna do it the classic way until we die," because it is the way it should be done.
And yeah, I think in 10 years you're gonna see a lot of people changing their process. Like, our machine right now has a computer interface that changes... Well, a human has to go in there and physically know that we need to change the temperature, 'cause that doesn't sound right. And at some point somebody's gonna try to plug AI into that machine and make it work that way.
100% that's going that way. Will they succeed? That's the question. We'll have to see. I mean, and a lot of that comes down to you all folk. You have to choose what you want to purchase, too. So as these things start to happen, there's gonna be a lot more questions in not just, you know, making show flyers. It's gonna be, how are you processing what you're making?
I think in any industry, not just mine, or ours. So anyway, yeah, I think we're gonna see a lot of it over the next 10 years. I don't think we're getting away from it, and I don't think it's going away, but it's how we react to it, all of us, and how we react to it is the world we make for the next 10, 20, 30 years.
LB: I think that brings up an interesting point, too, about kind of figuring out the line again between AI and just, like software, right? Because there could be a piece of equipment that measures the temperature and it connects to a piece of software which is like, "hey, it's hot."
But that doesn't have to be AI, you know? Yeah. So, but that's a very specific example.
CC: That’s like an important delineation, too, 'cause, I maybe hadn't considered... like, there's plenty of things I'm no expert at anything and wouldn't know if it was software or AI necessarily.
But that's on us to educate ourselves and I learned a little more from all of you tonight.
MC: You’re pretty good at writing a riff, if I may say so.
CC: Thank you.
Derik Hendrickson of Braeburn Records (DH): It opens up the question, is it analog to digital, or digital to analog, or is there now AI in the middle of all these flows, right? So where do we start? Where do we end? Where do we want it to go in the middle, and what do we want to touch it? Is it okay for software? Is it okay for AI? Did AI touch it without us knowing? Guess we don't know yet, so we need to keep working on that.
AW: I think for everything we're discussing, it all comes down to having a human discern if this is a right direction or a wrong direction. Right? I mean, that's the threshold we're all standing on right now.
CC: In the end, it's not necessarily the technologies themselves that are bad. Although, you know, some are bad. But, you know, it's the user. It's people that can make it a problem or an ethical dilemma, if maybe they don't have any ethics to begin with. And so yeah, that human component still has to be there for everything.
DS: That’s true. I mean, at the end of the day, humans are behind AI. So what advice do you guys have for young people in the music industry who are just starting out and seeing AI flood their feeds, and wanting to make a name for themselves in the industry?
MC: I think you still gotta go to the show. You gotta get to the gig.
CC: Amen.
MC: You gotta go make friends. You can do all this stuff on your computer at home, but you really need to get out and, and get to know people and get to see what your scene is like if you wanna take it to the next level.
LB: Totally agree with that. And to build on it, too, I would say just be less reliant on tech in general. Like, we're all gonna be on our phones, we're all gonna be on the computer, but like, like Matty said, go to the shows, but also book shows. Pass out physical flyers. At the end of the day, like you said earlier, the most important tool you have is the people you know and the relationships you have. And just do everything you can to just build on that.
MC: And do it yourself.
LB: Yep.
CC: Right.
AW: Yeah, and keep evolving. Keep evolving. I mean, even though AI is here, like we discussed, there are probably elements that everybody here in the room is using it for, but it's having the guts to do it, right? Like, all of you up here who started your own label or your own venue or your own pressing plant, you had to have the guts to do it at some point, and we need more people to continue to have the guts to do it. Do your own independent thing, 'cause it's what makes this world worth living in, really. That would be my advice to the young folk.
LB: Oh, and volunteer at DIY venues. We have Seventh Circle, D3, Ante Up. If you’re a young person looking to get into music, go volunteer at a DIY venue. Oh, and now there's D4. There's so many. Squirm.
DS: Yeah, there's a lot happening in the community. I'm sure a lot of you are already involved if you're at a kickass DIY experimental music festival like Ghost Canyon. But there's ways to get involved. If any of you guys wanna chat to these lovely folks after this, I encourage you to do so.
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