photo by: Courtesy of the Kansas Department of Commerce

Nick Carswell, right, founder of the Lawrence Music Alliance, poses with Lt. Gov. David Toland at the Governor's Arts Awards on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.

What does a leader in the local music scene do? Nick Carswell has been doing it for more than a decade, and his answer is: Whatever the musicians need him to do.

Carswell, who founded the Lawrence Music Alliance in 2023, has actually been helping musicians since around 2009, when he was living in Ireland. “I discovered artists whose music I was just very excited about,” he told the Journal-World, “and I approached them and asked them, what do they need to achieve what they want to achieve with their music?”

That led him to found an independent record label, but the musicians’ needs, it turned out, went beyond just putting out albums. Carswell said he filled all sorts of roles for these artists, “driving the tour bus, being more like a band manager, sometimes playing in the band.”

“Because that was the need that they had,” he said.

Seventeen years and thousands of miles away, he’s earned a reputation for thinking about what musicians need to succeed. He’s put on workshops, held conferences, found ways to help local musicians with touring expenses.

And now, he has a couple of awards to show for it, too: first, a Phoenix Award from the City of Lawrence in December, and now the award for Emerging Arts Leader of the Year at the Governor’s Arts Awards this past week.

Carswell is the first to note that it’s not about him. “It’s nice to be recognized, but one positive in the recognition is that we can give people a way to understand the importance of the work and also how they can be involved in it,” he said.

And over the next year, he and the Lawrence Music Alliance have a lot of that work to do – from providing more financial support for musicians to potentially organizing a new Lawrence Music Week showcase.

What is the industry?

This year’s Governor’s Arts Awards featured a couple of other Lawrence residents, too – filmmaker Kevin Willmott and KPR program director Darrell Brogdon among them. But the top award went to one of the state’s most famous music makers: former Eagles guitarist and Wichita native Joe Walsh.

One of his most famous songs, “Life’s Been Good,” is a satirical look at the music industry from the perspective of a rock star who can “live in hotels, tear out the walls” and then “have accountants pay for it all.”

The music industry, of course, isn’t as generous as that for the people that Carswell helps.

“The music industry doesn’t offer a whole lot of support,” he says.

But saying that, a question occurs to him: “What is the music industry, when I put it in that context?”

Thinking about “the music industry” as something that can help artists out – give them accountants to pay for it all – misses the fact that the industry isn’t one big entity. It’s made up of a diverse bunch of people who play music, record it, mix it, promote it and more. When the Lawrence Music Alliance did a music census in 2024, all of those groups and more were represented.

It’s those people who are the industry, and they need help from somewhere else.

“The industry needs a lot of support,” Carswell said.

Where that support can come from is state and local governments. And Carswell was on the state’s radar long before he was honored last week.

Back in 2021, the Kansas Arts Commission convened a statewide gathering of music industry stakeholders in Lawrence to discuss how to promote a “Kansas Music Ecosystem.” It produced a draft report that Carswell had a hand in creating, and the report says the music industry could benefit from stronger relationships with governments and more support in the form of grants.

Then, when the Lawrence Music Alliance formed in 2023, it became a kind of pilot for how local music industries could organize around the state.

“Kansas Arts Commission was quite instrumental in kind of getting this effort going, piloted in Lawrence,” Carswell said.

Part of the test run here was the music census, which was a partnership between the city, the Lawrence Music Alliance, the Arts Commission, Explore Lawrence and live entertainment venues. It was an effort to find out what members of Lawrence’s music industry wanted and needed to be successful, and it received more than 800 responses.

“Through the census, we have a lot of data about where we can be effective,” Carswell said. “So we want to continue those relationships and support artists in the things they want.”

The business side

What they want are more gigs and more ways to make their work financially viable, and so a lot of the alliance’s programming is oriented toward the business side of music.

Last year, as the Journal-World reported, the alliance debuted its Music Business Month program – a slate of drop-in discussions and workshops where musicians could meet with event promoters and learn about grants and other resources they could access. Carswell said Music Business Month will be returning in March, and this time its events will be scheduled around the new date of the MixMaster conference. That conference, which includes a mix of performances and workshops for creatives, normally happens in September, but this year Carswell said it’s being moved to March 29.

“We’ll see what additional programming can happen in March,” he said of the business-related events. “… We’re hoping more entities in traditional entrepreneurship can get involved, and that would be one of the things we’d like to see change from one year to the next.”

The alliance has also been working with its government partners to help get artists more opportunities for financial support.

“Part of our role this year, we would like to support artists financially, which we have done around getting artists gigs,” Carswell said.

The alliance has “a fantastic relationship with the City of Lawrence,” he said, and the city has worked with the alliance to book local musicians for public celebrations like Summerfest, the city’s Independence Day gathering. And Carswell mentioned the city also has a Community Arts Grant Program, which offers mini grants of up to $500 to help artists with equipment purchases. Applications for the current round of mini grants are still open and will run through March 6; an application can be found on the city’s website at lawrenceks.gov/prc/art-grants.

Touring support for musicians is another thing Carswell’s group has made an effort to provide. He said the alliance has experimented with a travel grant for musicians to attend conferences and festivals both within and outside of Kansas, in partnership with the Kansas Arts Commission.

“Supporting artists directly with grants or travel subsidies is something we’re hoping to make happen this year,” he said.

Envisioning a music week

But the alliance also wants to broaden its scope and do things that are more public-facing. And one of those ideas has been around since the statewide convening in 2021: a music week.

It’s not clear what Lawrence Music Week will look like or when it will be held – Carswell characterized it as more of a “concept” right now. But the Lawrence Music Alliance has started exploring what it might include, and it’s even received some economic development funding from the city to help. As the Journal-World reported, the alliance was allocated $46,000 for programming in 2026, and Lawrence Music Week was something it mentioned in the “action plan” it submitted to the city.

“It is really just an idea at the moment, but I think it’s a good idea to put (it) out there and see how folks respond,” Carswell said.

What Carswell does know is that Lawrence Music Week will help the alliance grow its public profile. “I think the biggest thing with the idea of Lawrence Music Week is the outward-facing piece,” he said.

A lot of other cities have done events to showcase their music industries, Carswell said, and he’s seen the impact this type of program can make – “a centrally marketed, branded effort around putting music at the center of a lot of activities.”

Part of the work is finding out which activities are a good fit for Lawrence.

“Really where we are now is just going and offering the prompt to the community, what do they think Lawrence Music Week should be? What do they want to see?” Carswell said. “Because music stretches so far, that could be a lot of different things.”

Maybe it looks like other big cultural events in the city, he said, with concerts throughout downtown. But it could also involve things like music education, choirs and youth and community activities.

“The exciting thing about Lawrence Music Week would be that it would be a chance for music fans and the audience to really embrace a coordinated celebration of music in Lawrence,” Carswell said.

At the Lawrence Music Alliance’s gatherings, Carswell said there’s always the opportunity to share ideas for Lawrence Music Week and other programs. The alliance holds a bi-monthly music industry meetup – the next one is scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts St. – where the focus is on networking and hearing new ideas.

“Those are always opportunities for people to attend, learn more and have a chance to share ideas,” Carswell said. And if you can’t make it to one, he said the alliance is easy to find on social media and that membership in the group is “very open at the moment.”

Above all, Carswell wants people in the music scene to get involved, and their participation matters to him more than any award, he says.

“The recognition is nice,” Carswell said. “But I’ll truly be satisfied when it leads to more people engaging in the work.”