Welcome to our newest program, UnMuted
In the music and arts community diversity has pretty much always been synonymous with creativity. This has certainly been true over the more than ten year life of Volume Bomb. Even still, queer and women led bands have a harder time finding purchase in the largely straight/cis/male dominated realms of aggressive music like punk rock, metal, hardcore and "other musical forms underground". This is why we decided to focus on elevating the visibility of these artists specifically, with UnMuted.
Small budget, big ideas
Before becoming a nonprofit (2025) the way Volume Bomb operated was to put on an event or show that hopefully made enough money to fund the next show. Now, thanks to winning some grants and collecting some donations we are running on a (very small) annual budget. Which is fantastic! However, starting a new program means finding ways to fund it. Enter: crowdfunding campaign! This May we will be running a 'pledge drive' all month that will culminate in a Fancy 'Gayla' at Swan Dive (727 SE Grand, PDX) on May 29th. We'll have live and silent auctions, live music performances, nosh, specialty cocktails, a "wine-pull" and lots of other fun surprises.
So what are we going to do with the money we raise for UnMuted? Well, like the header says, we've got some big ideas. Our first official UnMuted event will be July 4, 2026. Pride At Full Volume, an all ages, free-to-attend, afternoon/evening block party on the 2500 block of SE Clinton (Dot's/Clinton St Theater block). With two stages we will be alternating queer & women-led bands on one and Portland style Drag on the other. We'll also be having a fashion show that afternoon and as the sun goes down we'll vibe shift to a dance party inside Dot's. A lot of donations will go to fund this event but that's not all. Going forward we hope to offer UnMuted workshops with local creative minds sharing their knowledge, experiences and resources around playing live music in the PNW. Another funding goal is for us to be able to create more free events around town that showcase our community's queer and women artists. We'd also like to go back to our roots of putting out compilation records and feature an UnMuted comp. So much to do!
How can you help?
Believe me when I tell you - every donation is helpful. But we also have some special gifts for different donor levels that you can see when you click/tap that donate button ➡︎