This month we feature BluesTraveler.net. Here’s a bit more on the site…
BluesTraveler.net was officially launched by Craig Davis and Jason Millner on April 20th, 1999, but its roots go as far back as 1994, when Misha Rutman started work on the first Blues Traveler site on the Internet. Jason had been contributing setlists to the archive there for years, and eventually he and Craig decided to start their own site.
In the meantime, Dave Mallick had started his own site at college, filling in gaps on Misha’s site – a discography, unreleased song lyrics, guest appearances by John Popper with other bands, information on shows with missing setlists – and Dave Bernreuther had done the same, with a frequently-updated news section, show reviews, and other features. Three months after the launch of BluesTraveler.net, the four fans combined their resources to form one super-site at the same address, and Misha gave his blessing to include his old content as well. A mere five weeks later, bassist and founding member Bob Sheehan passed away, and the site became a focal point for fans to gather, mourn, and remember Brooklyn Bob.
With the decision of the band to keep making music together came the desire to revamp the web site, and so began the background work to convert the site to a true searchable database and research tool par excellence. Longtime fan Joe Catanese took it upon himself to learn php and mysql, and slowly but surely the site took shape into what you see today. In 2003 the band relaunched its official web site, and rather than including its own fan-related content, it linked BluesTraveler.net as the official fan site, deferring to us on the fan-generated content that has become our specialty. Chris Soule has since taken over as the site’s database admin, and continues to make key changes that make its management and upkeep a much easier task for all involved.
Today, contributions to the site come from far and wide – ticket stubs and handbills from the sweaty days of the Wetlands Preserve, setlist reports from soldiers stationed overseas in Bosnia and Japan, and often under-the-radar news leaks from sources within the band’s management. The relationship between everyone in the Blues Traveler family continues to make the site what it is today – "the fan’s source for Blues Traveler information".