Over the past few years the Wisconsin Area Music Industry Awards has built a reputation of not looking very far beyond Milwaukee County when nominating "Wisconsin music industry" folk for awards. The result was the birth of the Madison Area Music Awards, an awards show dedicated specifically to artists based in the Great Madison region of Wisconsin. When the WAMI nominees were announced this year it was nice to see a much better representation of all of Wisconsin and a number of Madison-based acts. This year nominees in various categories from Wisconsin's Capitol City included the Blueheels, .357 String Band, Moon Gypsies, Figureheads, Mighty Short Bus, Milwaukee and Madison shared ska band Something To Do, music paper Maximum Ink, and recording studio Smart Studios. The awards ceremony was held on Monday at Milwaukee's Turner Hall and a number of the above acts beat out their Milwaukee counterparts (the full list can be found here):

Bluegrass: .357 String Band
Folk/acoustic: The Moon Gypsies
R&B/soul/hip-hop: The Figureheads
Studio: Smart Studios