The 411

Hey! You’ve stumbled across the archives for music writer Justin F. Farrar. Though this site doesn’t contain all my published work, it does feature most of the feature articles, essays, interviews, record reviews and show previews published in the last five years or so. I’m constantly adding new pieces, as well as digging up older stuff from them ye olde ’90s.

I started writing about music back in the fall of 1993. Then a freshman at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I wrote my first article on the “great used CD debate” for the school newspaper, The Western Herald. Unlike a lot of modern music writers, I’m not a hyper-literate post-grad; nor am I well-versed in post-modern theory and critical studies. I’m simply a hardcore record nerd and vinyl collector who thought writing about music sounded like a great way to waste a life.

I currently live with my wife Mehgan and two cats Mac and Alex in Asheville, North Carolina,  a cool little town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’ve also lived in Boston, New York City, San Francisco and Cleveland.

Here’s a list of nearly every alternative weekly, newspaper, magazine, zine and website I’ve written for since my college days:

Blastitude
Boston Phoenix
Broward-Palm Beach New Times
Cambridge Chronicle (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Copper Press
Dallas Observer
Dusted
East Bay Express (Oakland/Berkeley)
Foxy Digitalis
Hit List
Houston Press
Kalamazoo Gazette
Miami New Times
Minneapolis/St. Paul City Paper
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, North Carolina)
Nashville Scene
OC Weekly (Orange County, California)
Phoenix New Times
Rhapsody Blog
Riverfront Times (St. Louis)
Seattle Weekly
SF Weekly (San Francisco)
Scene (Cleveland)
Sound Collector
Sound Collector Audio Review
Swingset
Unpop
Vice
Village Voice (New York)
Western Herald (Western Michigan University)
Westword (Denver)
Yeti
Yourflesh