Jake Fine says the most important thing people can take from his concerts has nothing to do with music.
"If there's nothing else that people take away from Fine Tuned, it's actually not to be musically inspired," Fine said. "It's to be inspired to lean into building community and starting something."
Fine, a music teacher, touring drummer and organizer, runs Fine Tuned Presents, which books original live music in Westminster venues ranging from the Carroll Arts Center's gallery to a laundromat. He was the first guest on Wireside Chats, a new Westminster Wire series of roughly 20-minute interviews with people from the community.
The series is produced with assistance from cecil.tv, and the first episode was recorded in the gallery at the Carroll Arts Center on Main Street in Westminster.
From a college club to the community
Fine describes himself as "a local music teacher, musician and community organizer." He said everything he does traces back to one mission: building community around music.
He was born in Rhode Island and grew up in Florida, Texas and New Jersey before arriving at McDaniel College in 2017. Nearly 10 years later, Westminster is the longest he has lived anywhere.
As a freshman, Fine noticed McDaniel offered classical, jazz, folk and bluegrass, but little of the contemporary music he and his friends listened to. He started a live music club on campus to book concerts. He majored in music, becoming one of the last students to go through McDaniel's music program, and later earned a master of science in teaching instrumental music there.
The COVID-19 pandemic put live music on hold while Fine finished his education degree. He began teaching music part-time at the Montessori School of Westminster, where he still teaches one or two days a week. He also toured the country as a drummer with several Baltimore-based bands, playing shows in Baltimore, as far west as Denver and up and down the East Coast, but rarely at home.
"Looking around all these places, I was like, well, we could have this here," Fine said. "We're probably not going to have the Brooklyn indie venue scene where we have 40 to choose from each night, but we could have something."
His first community show was in the gallery at the Carroll Arts Center, the same room where the interview was recorded. He thought of it, he said, as the McDaniel live music club "but in real life."
Original music in unexpected places
Fine Tuned focuses on original music, which Fine acknowledged is the harder path for musicians. Cover bands, he said, are often a town's best-known acts because that is where the money is, from bars and wineries to weddings.
"I'm not knocking the cover bands," Fine said. "That's how you put food on the table."
Original artists, by contrast, often tour with little support. Fine said that on the road he hoped for lodging with "three walls and a floor," and has slept in houses missing a wall.
He wanted to create more opportunities for those artists in Westminster, partly by working with businesses that don't think of themselves as music venues.
The best-known example is an April 2026 four-band punk show at Amy's Laundry, a Westminster laundromat. The show drew a crowd that night and found a second life on social media afterward, including TikTok.
Fine said he didn't expect it to take off online. He chose the laundromat on purpose.
"There's all sorts of people who show up to the laundromat, and there's all sorts of people who show up to punk shows," he said.
Punk bands, he added, are used to playing garages, basements and basketball courts rather than seated theaters, so he expected they would be up for an unusual room. He said he looks for "intentional artists" and tries to curate intentional shows, even if a given band isn't to every listener's taste.
Asked what makes Westminster a place where a music scene could grow, Fine pointed to two things.
The first is what he called a blank slate. Young people here drive past empty fields and see empty storefronts downtown and along Route 140. That emptiness, he said, "can create a lot of apathy or it can create a lot of inspiration."
The second is a core of people who show up again and again. Fine cited the saying that 10% of people do 90% of the work, and said those regulars have become his mentors, sponsors, venue hosts and guides to the town's music history.
That history, he said, is richer than many people realize:
Common Ground on the Hill, a Westminster-based traditional arts nonprofit where Fine interned and volunteered in college. Its summer programs bring in musicians along with woodworkers, blacksmiths, weavers and others. Fine said it showed him how a community can center on music without being only about listening to it.
Coffey Music downtown, where Fine worked and met many local musicians who taught there and gigged on weekends, including guitarist John Christ, formerly of the band Danzig.
The Carroll Arts Center, where he caught touring acts such as the Eric Byrd Trio and Common Ground collaborations.
An indie rock and pop scene of the late 2010s. Fine called it the "Westminster to Nashville pipeline," because many of its musicians moved to Nashville and other cities with more opportunities. Some have since returned.
Chasefest, a multi-day backyard music festival organized by high school students, and The Garage, a former punk venue on Pennsylvania Avenue, along with house shows.
"There have always been these threads of musical culture here," Fine said. "They've just been really under the radar and kind of fractured from each other, because it's hard to keep it going."
'Yes, you can do it'
The chat turned to the topic of Bryson Jackson, a Westminster resident who recently staged his own Michael Jackson tribute performance on Locust Lane. Jackson got a permit from the city, brought his own speaker and performed, without waiting for an organized music series or festival.
Asked what he would tell others thinking about doing something similar, Fine turned to the camera. "Go do the thing. Start the concert. Start the art gallery. Try it. Apply for the permit," he said.
Fine acknowledged there can be barriers, whether bureaucratic, governmental or "emotional and internal." But he said people often tell him they could never do what he does, and he disagrees.
"I don't think that what I'm doing is particularly unique or special or hard to do," Fine said. "I think the hardest part is just the consistency, and to continue doing it."
He said that is why he started: so people would look at an empty storefront and picture a concert, a gallery, or a community space where people can spend time together without having to buy something.
Fine also pushed back on online commentary that Westminster has nothing to do, lacks diversity, or lost its best days decades ago. He said Fine Tuned shows at Amy's Laundry, the Carroll Arts Center and other spots around town draw a different audience each time, many of them newcomers.
"There actually are things to do here," he said.
How to keep up with Fine Tuned
Fine Tuned Presents is @finetunedpresents on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and will answer messages about upcoming shows.
Fine said the most reliable option is the Fine Tuned email list, which he writes and sends himself. Sign up at finetunedpresents.com.