"The Sound of History:" An Interview with Autumn Cuddy (M.A. 2019)

I got into history because of my parents. My dad was a big history buff, and we had a lot of books, mostly on military history, like the civil war. He and my mom would take the family to visit old battlefields all around the country. We spent a lot of time looking at empty fields. While I liked going to see history, I quickly realized that the field of military history was not for me.

I got more interested in the documentation aspect of history as I was going through school. I must have changed majors a hundred times in undergrad. Then I got really lucky when I was at Louisiana State University - Shreveport, where my History professor was an FSU History alumnus, Dr. Mikaberidze, who teaches the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. He told me that if I had any interest in French Revolution history, I should go and study with Dr. Blaufarb at FSU. I came to FSU’s History department for the fast-track Ph.D. in the Napoleonic Institute. I knew that I wanted to work on something archives related but wasn’t quite sure about the context.

Then I took Dr. Koslow’s public history class and understood that this field was for me. I liked history - but I loved public history. I switched to the M.A. program for Historical Administration and Public History. Then I interned at the Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, and that opened my eyes even more. Actually, doing history made me very excited because I like to tell people about history. I participated in their living history program and wrote my M.A. thesis on the original Spanish carpenters who had worked at the Mission. Additionally, the public history program taught me about archives, and after graduation, I started working at the State Archives of Florida.

I worked there for two years. First as a redactor, and then I moved on to being a full-time archivist. A lot of the archival training that I got was remote and self-taught, as this was in the middle of Covid. After the State Archives, I moved to Western Massachusetts for a job as an archivist at a regional theatre company. I was looking for a new challenge and working for a non-profit as their sole archivist was a change of pace. One of my responsibilities was recording all of the company’s performances, which meant that I had to acquire videography skills. I decided that I needed training in audio recording too and began to look into suitable programs. But just as I had found the perfect course for me – a combination of online learning and in-person apprenticeship, the theatre company announced that they did not need an archive or an archivist anymore. I decided seek certification in audio engineering and music production nonetheless but relocated to Columbia, Missouri, where I had family.

The program put me in touch with Wil Reeves who had a recording studio in Columbia, and for six months I was his apprentice. I put in circa 300 hours in his Centro Cellar Studio, and I learned everything from running cables and arranging mics to offering advice on particular recordings. It was fascinating to observe the whole process from the first meetings with clients to mastering the final recording. I learned so much more than I might need in a regular archival job.

I started a part-time job in the conservation lab of the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia at the same time. I worked on newspaper conservation. Then I got hired full time as the processing archivist. My boss remembered that I had the certification in audio engineering and asked if I wanted to process a collection of local music posters that had been donated to the society. This launched my current endeavor: the CoMo Music Project.

The posters look very cool, but they don’t tell you much, there is no context. Most of them aren’t even dated. And posters without photos, video or audio recordings, or even music reviews are not very useful for people studying music history. That’s when I realized that I needed to collect things on the artists who were featured in the posters. I started this project in the fall of 2024, and it has consumed most of my workdays since then. I am canvassing Columbia-based musicians for any paper, digital, or A/V records they have on their own music or that of other artists. I am particularly interested in samples of their album art which often means them donating their music too. Many musicians are still active though, and while they have extensive collections, they are not ready to hand them over to an archive.

I began by collecting music and album art from the 1990s and the early 2000s. That’s where I had connections through my apprenticeship in the recording studio. Now, the word has spread, and I am receiving material from earlier decades too. I made a poster and a zine telling people about the project, and I am receiving photos and videos and zines to provide context for the music posters. I am open to anything to do with the history of local music in Columbia, Missouri. Whether it is from musicians or fans, radio personalities, journalists, or venue owners, material that got published or not, recordings, notes and doodles, as long as it has to do with the history of the local music scene, I’ll take it!

I also started collecting oral histories. I am trying to tap into the memories of people who might not have physically collected anything but still went to concerts and followed local musicians. I did some interviews previously while working for the theater company. Here I am trying to complement the growing physical collection. Once the oral histories have been approved, we put them online in our digital repository so that anyone can listen to them from anywhere.

I have several goals for this music project. In October, the project will be one year old. I am planning on making another zine describing the work done so far with a list of all the donors and a "thank you" to the two volunteers who have helped me index the bands noted on the posters. Together we created an extensive finding aid for the poster collection.

I will also be presenting on my work at the annual Missouri Conference on History in March 2026. I want to share my strategies for collecting and archiving local music history and make more people aware of what I am doing, both other archivists and members of the music scene. It is important to collaborate with other archivists who might be working on similar pop culture collections, and it is important to be as authentic and open to the people from whom I am collecting material. I don’t want them to see me as exploiting them for what they hold or know. Instead, I want them to know that I am trying to celebrate a part of their life without judgement of any kind.

Part of my effort to celebrate and give back to the music community comes in the form of organizing an inaugural summer music series (“Music at Noon”) of live music concerts at the research center featuring local Columbia artists. We had three (May, June, July) and I’m putting together another bigger-scale one in October as a fundraising event for next year’s series. The music series brings in a lot of people who would otherwise never come to the historical society and exposes our regular patrons, staff, and members to artists they have never heard before. There were 100 people in the audience for the July show! They’re free shows, and we pay the artists. Mutually beneficial arrangement!

For the American Historical Association annual meeting in New Orleans in 2027, I have contacted a few people who work on similar projects to put together a panel. I want to make others aware that this is an area of history that’s all around us but very ephemeral. Maybe less nowadays than a few decades ago, but nonetheless, there are not that many music histories or archives that focus on the recent local rather than global phenomena. Even though this history might seem very young, musicians do not have a long shelf life. They often live and make music in the moment and do not automatically think about preserving what they are doing. My message is: with this type of collection, don’t wait until it is history.

Additionally, I want to put together an interactive story map of the music scene in downtown Columbia. I would like to document the many different music venues that existed in the past and that have now been replaced by stores, apartments, and parking garages. I want to use this online map as a springboard for building a walking tour through central Columbia allowing people to follow in the footstep of local music. I am hoping that through crowd sourcing we can build that map out into a community archive with people submitting photos or stories about particular places to enrich the walking tour.

As you can see, I have a lot of plans, and I am hoping to work on more pop culture projects in the future. I also want to become more active in the local music scene itself.  I am already a part of the music scene through my work at the studio and as a live sound engineer for local venues.

I started with drum lessons, and I spend a lot of time still in the recording studio. In many ways, the local musicians have become my friends – and so have my work colleagues. Things have fallen into place for me, and I am looking forward to documenting all sorts of local histories … and even contributing to some myself.

For anyone in grad school wondering what to do with a public history degree my advice is to grab any internship that interests you and pursue it. Even if it seems very far away from a career, chase it because you never know what doors it might open. My time at the Mission San Luis did this for me.

Also, if your first job after graduation does not make you as happy as you want to be, just keep looking. Personally, it took some years before I connected with the music side of archival work, so it was important for me to have kept looking. Just keep your eyes open to new opportunities. And until you have found your work-passion, assemble as many skills and experiences as you can. When I started grad school, I knew I wanted to work in archives. But I did not know what kind of field or subject. You have to keep searching until you find the topic that makes you want to stay in your career field, not just get into the field. In many ways, the grad degree is just the beginning of the journey.