Been a hot minute since I have made a post. For the past several months, who am I kidding – this past summer, I’ve been holed up doing a lot of different things music related. Initially I had a plan to be releasing singles on a set schedule and then a monkey wrench came my way. A good monkey wrench mind you.
I was asked to prepare a list of 8 things before I start releasing songs again. That’s 8 things per song as currently not doing albums any more. Most of that stuff I had already been doing, but there were a few things that I had not been doing. It lit a fire up under my ass to actually get the rest of the list done on anything new that I plan on releasing. But my workhorse self decided I needed to do this for several of my past singles as well. These are important things that were getting left out.
Fortunately another friend stepped up to offer a trade of services. One of those services were on my list of 8 things I was missing. How awesome is that?!? I’m getting to trade something I need for something that I can do. That is the idea of music videos. Thus we’ve shot two music videos so far for previous releases. They’re done, in the can, ready to go. I’m waiting on VEVO to give my label control of my VEVO channel so they can start releasing them. They sure seem to take their sweet time responding to anything. Rest assured that as soon as VEVO grants us control to my VEVO channel, there will be new videos coming once they stop leaving us out of control of my channel.
Another aspect I had been missing, lyric videos. I’m in process of creating several lyric videos as well as saying, I’ve got several done in the can, ready to go. Again, waiting on VEVO. Those video are feeling left out, but hopefully not much longer.
There’s another avenue I’ve been traveling where I’m producing other artists. Sometimes it goes really well, other times it’s a process of explanation during recording. I’m a stickler. I can’t let things slide when it comes sonic quality and I strive to make it as awesome as possible to listen to. For some artists it’s easy and they can perform. For others, it’s difficult being under a microscope and coached to get that tingly hair raising vibe from them. That’s the gold standard, does it perk my ears up or make the hairs on my arm stand up? If so, we’ve nailed it. I don’t want other people to get left out of feeling those hairs stand up.
Additionally, I’ve been working really hard on another project in my current home town. One that is meant to lift up the entire music community. To improve their songwriting, their performance chops and hopefully allow them to demand and earn more when they do perform. I was able to get a space from the city strictly for this endeavor. As of a couple of days ago and several months after initial approval then an out of the blue disapproval and back to re-approval, that space is ours to use. Songwriting events start to commence this coming Wednesday and people are excited. Which is just plain awesome. We don’t plan on leaving anyone out.
Beyond this, sometimes you get caught up in other people’s bullshit. Which also happened this week. I was subpoenaed out of the blue for a lawsuit happening between two people I don’t even know. One is an artist. The other is a producer. The short of it is (for this post anyway, I do plan on a much longer post about all this as it is a good lesson for budding artists and producers alike), said artist sued said producer for breach of contract and won. Said artist then solicited bids for production from other local area producers to find the most expensive one to use as an example in suing for damages. That one happened to be me. Now I’m dragged into their mess, I really wish they left me out of it. As I wrote, I will be writing a much longer post about this in the coming days as it does make for a real good lesson.
Finally, getting left out. It’s not a state secret that I’m an award winning songwriter and I’m not a slouch as a performer either. But I do pick my shows and my means of playing live carefully as I don’t like to lose money doing it. There is a festival going on right now in my home town where I’m getting questioned by friends, fans, and even representatives as far away as Nashville and Los Angeles as to why I am not on the bill. I know the main reason, but I’m not keen on sharing it. But it’s hard to not feel a little bit bitter about it when it is put on by local people and as an artist you are the one full time musician that has won awards and lives there full time but not invited to play with a large amount of other award winning songwriters from out of town. Fortunately I have friends who have sought to get me on the bill to no avail. And more fortunately one of the main peeps did grant me an access pass to at least attend the events I wish to attend with the words “We’ll work on getting you on the bill next year.”
Oh, I’ve also been making some behind the scenes additions to my website. One of them is the addition of player buttons from multiple streaming services. Now I’ve added Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, YouTube and Amazon to the main page. I’m still behind on adding them to all the previous releases, but I’m getting there. I’ve also been working on playlisting landing pages. Where a person can click a button and immediately playlist one of my songs on Spotify. The process works you can see the page for A Perfect Man as of right now. I have them for other songs. I’m almost to a point to be making them all public. Once I have the done I will start making it happen for Deezer and Apple Music as well as I believe those two services also allow us to do it via an API. They will come with time. So right now Deezer and Apple Music (as well as other services that don’t allow it) are getting left out.
That is all for right now.
Working on not going radio silent again.