Name Brett Callwood | Role Journalist | |
Books MC5: Sonically Speaking : a Tale of Revolution and Rock 'n' Roll | ||
Brett Callwood is an English journalist, copy writer, editor and author, currently living and working in Los Angeles. He is a writer with the LA Weekly, Music Connection, Idobi, Westword and more. He was previously a reporter at the Longmont Times-Call and Daily Camera, the music editor at the Detroit Metro Times and editor-in-chief at Yellow Scene magazine.
Since beginning his professional writing career in 1999 with the publication of a review of hardcore band dBh in Kerrang!, Callwood has contributed to a number of barely notable rock and heavy metal magazines, among them Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Record Collector, Terrorizer, Alternative Press and Metal Edge. His work has also appeared in publications catering to alternative lifestyles and subcultures, such as Bizarre, tattoo magazine Skin Deep and horror magazine Fangoria, and musician's magazines like Guitarist, Rhythm, Modern Drummer, Total Guitar, Acoustic and Bass Guitar. Until 2014, he wrote for the Detroit alternative weekly newspaper the Metro Times, and he has also been published in detroit.metromix.com and the Detroit Free Press. During the early part of 2010, he worked on the news desk at Crain's Detroit Business.
To date Callwood has authored two books, both biographies of groups instrumental in establishing the Detroit garage rock scene of the late 1960s / early '70s. The first, MC5 biography Sonically Speaking, was published in the UK in 2007, with The Stooges: A Journey Through The Michigan Underworld following in 2008. Both were published in North America on Wayne State Press, in the falls of 2010 and 2011 respectively. The US edition of the book on The Stooges was renamed The Stooges - Head On: A Journey Through The Michigan Underground.
In June 2010, he "hooked" up with Driven Solutions, Inc, an advertising house, as a copy writer. His writing on a campaign for the Ferndale Police won eight awards at the D Show 2010.
In February 2011, he started work with Benzinga.com, a business finance website, as a staff writer. That came to an end in the Fall of 2012, when he started working full-time for the Metro Times newspaper in Detroit.
From June 2011 until June 2014, Callwood had a weekly column in the Metro Times and a daily blog on MetroTimes.com called City Slang, cementing his standing as a major voice in Detroit music journalism. At the Metro Times, he graduated from freelance writer and columnist, to business assistant, to staff writer, to his final position as music editor.
Callwood won consecutive SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) Detroit awards in 2013, 2014 and 2015 for his features on Detroit musicians Ty Stone, Josh Malerman and the Insane Clown Posse respectively. He was voted "Best Blogger" by Metro Times readers in the 2014 "Best Of" polls.
In August 2014, Callwood relocated to Colorado and began work at Yellow Scene magazine in Erie as an associate editor. He was promoted twice, to managing editor and then to the position of editor-in-chief. 2015 saw Callwood add to his SPJ Detroit award with a First Place award in the Colorado SPJs for a feature entitled "Options in Education," designed by Jennifer Ho. He also oversaw and edited a company-second First Place award, written by Ryan Howe and designed by Trisha Himmler, called "From Light to End of Life," focussing on the subject of death.
In November 2015, he switched to the Daily Camera/Denver Post family to take the community reporter position at the Longmont Times-Call. As well as being published in the Times-Call, Camera and Post, this job has seen him published in the Colorado Daily, Broomfield Enterprise, Hometown Weekly, and the Loveland Reporter-Herald. In that same month, he also began writing as a freelancer for Westword, Denver's alt weekly, and Out Front, a Denver-based gay publication. Westword is part of the Voice Media Group, and Callwood has had stories reprinted in the LA Weekly.