_This month Martin Schiavone talks about the development of his Keller Williams fan site, K-Dub.org
I first heard of Keller in the spring of 2000, but I never got to listen to any of his music until Labor Day that same year. It was his Breathe album with SCI. I have been into The Grateful Dead and other jam bands for several years but missed out on Keller until then. Anyway, that same night I went home and downloaded two shows. I still remember which ones, 5-5-00 & 6-9-00, both at Peasants Cafn Greenville, NC, both stellar shows. I was into Phil & Friends as well as Ratdog very much at the time. In fact the first time I saw Keller was 8-10-01 at the opening night of the So Many Roads tour with KDTU, Rusted Root, and Ratdog. Keller did a little tweener in between Rusted Root and Ratdog. I was into other jam band fan websites at the time like Ratdog.org and Philzone.com (which are pretty much my inspiration) for checking setlists, tour dates, and the message board or whatever, but Keller did not have one. I knew a little HTML and thought about putting together something but sort of threw it in the back of my mind.
Keller was obviously growing fast as far as recognition that next year with the popularity of Breathe. I had seen several Keller shows in that time. I was blown away and grew to be a bigger fan each time. I decided, what the hell, I will give it a shot. Then people will have a nice place to go to get the fan prospective along with news or information about Keller. The domain was kind of hard to get. Some people know KellerWilliams.com is a reality company, and the official Keller home page is Kellerwilliams.net. It also seems there are other kdub’s out there. To make a long story short, I took k-dub.org in August 2001. I worked on the layout and information to add, and on November 20, 2002, k-dub.org was open. I also went to a show in my home town that night and gave as many other fans as I could the site address. The site has since had tremendous popularity, and I love the fact that I can provide a cool place for Keller fans to go and hang out.
At this point k-dub.org is comprised of everything you can think of as far as a fan site would include. It has links to articles/reviews, Keller news, setlists, tour dates, pictures, discography, lyrics, a great message board, and even a couple shows to download. I feel like there is so much more for me to work on, a lot of it having to do with the site’s functionality. My plan for the future is to add a database with searchable setlists; I would also love to have a stats section. In addition, I am working a bit more on the organization of information and a couple other ideas I have floating around. Time will tell ,and you will have to check out the site to see when.
I had a great time creating k-dub.org and love working on it as much as I can. I want to thank Team Keller at kellerwilliams.net, Madison House, SCI, and Ed for getting in with me to offer the wonderful message board. I also want to thank Mr. Dan for starting the tabs section by giving me the first couple tabs at k-dub.org and all the others on the listserv for also contributing and helping out! K-dub.org would not have much without you guys. Oh yeah….we can’t forget about Keller! Rock on!