We’re excited to announced that we’ve added three new members to our rapidly growing writing staff.  To cover Los Angeles’ thriving live music scene, we’ve added two: Ian Joulain and Katie Booth.  We’ve also hired a London-based writer, James Somerside, to cover British acts and news.

Ian has covered the local music scene extensively for LA Weekly and OC Weekly.  Katie is a Vegas native and a double threat.  Besides her writing background, much of which was for the Chico News & Review, Katie is also an actress.  James, or Sir James as we’re about to start calling him, much to his undoubted chagrin, easily has the best accent on our staff.  By day, he works in internal communications for a London-based entertainment company.  By night, he’s ours!

We also want to acknowledge the departures of two original members of BestNewBands.com’s writing staff:

Katrina Nattress, our LA-based writer, who in the past year also took on the role of Premieres Editor for us, has accepted a full-time music gig with an indie label in her home state of Oregon.

Our LA-based Editor, Daniel Kohn, has accepted a writing job with Ranker.com. Since before Day One, Daniel has been our driving force in developing our “voice” and his relationships with labels and publicists have opened a lot of doors for us. He’s been among the very first to write about many of the new recording artists that are now household names and Grammy Award winners.

We’re grateful for the significant contributions made by Daniel and Katrina covering LA’s vibrant music scene.  Each has turned us on to dozens of terrific new acts over the years and we wish them both well in their new positions.  They’ll be missed.