VERSE FOR CASH: Ask around and any writer this side of Stephen King will tell you that $47 per line isn’t a bad payday. Which is what something called the Talent Literary Guild claims to be offering to the grand prize winner of its "Free Poetry Contest," the title of which refers to the lack of an entry fee. The top prize is $1000, and the entries — in any style, on any subject — must be no longer than 21 lines. The deadline for entries is June 5; poems can be sent to Free Poetry Contest, 1257 Siskiyou Boulevard, PMB 4, Ashland, Oregon 97520, or visit www.freecontest.com.

In most respects Jenny Toomey had what in the early ’90s was a typical introduction to the business of indie rock. She and her DC-area roommate Kristin Thompson started a band called Tsunami. Having watched punk bands like Fugazi do it themselves in the ’80s, the singing/songwriting/guitar-playing duo started their own little label, Simple Machines, and began releasing cassettes, vinyl 45s, and eventually full-length CDs of material by their own band and their friends’ bands. Nothing unusual about any of that. But by the end of the ’90s, Toomey’s experiences with Simple Machines had turned her into more than just an underground artist/entrepreneur: she’d become an activist intent on furthering the cause of independent artists in a business dominated by increasingly consolidated major labels. She began by teaching other like-minded musicians how to record and release their own material, then by championing low-power radio. Most recently she formed the Future of Music Coalition.

Although Tsunami are no longer a going concern, Toomey hasn’t abandoned music: she’s got two solo albums in the can (both will see release this fall), and she’s about to embark on a mini-tour that’ll bring her to the Middle East next Saturday. She’ll be performing with a line-up that features Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue on piano, Tsunami collaborator Amy Domingues on cello and bass, Jean Cook on viola and violin, Tsunami/Ida drummer Trip Grey, and trumpeter Kevin Cordt. And she’ll be joined by singer/songwriter Daniel Bejar, who records under the nom de pop Destroyer.

"The main push behind this tour is that I love the songwriting of Daniel Bejar so much that the opportunity to take him on the beginnings of his first American tour was too much for me to pass up," Toomey admits over the phone from DC. "And it’s not particularly hard for me, after running a label for eight years, to set up a mini-tour."

But Toomey’s also hoping to lay the groundwork for a more ambitious tour in the fall, when she’s aiming to spend as much time promoting Future of Music Coalition business as she does playing music. "Right now we’ve got between 5000 and 7000 people who have signed the Future of Music manifesto at www.futureofmusic.com. And that’s without us actually going out and beating the bushes for it. Our goal is to use the enormous changes brought on by technology and the Internet to shine a spotlight on the fact that the traditional music-business model benefits less than one percent of musicians. The traditional music-business model has never served the majority of musicians. So we want to make sure that as we build out the Web, we do all that we can to make sure that the same market consolidation that has locked most musicians away from audiences isn’t replicated."

To that end, Toomey has been busy forging alliances with people who are, as she puts it, "fighting these battles in other areas of the arts and media." And she’s making arrangements to speak at various universities across the country in the fall.

BY MATT ASHARE