Jody Whitesides

Tag: building a fan community

Ties Are Truly Bound – New Mix, Story, and Fan Connection

It’s gonna be an exciting week. Yesterday kicked it off with some audio sample work that I’ve been helping a company with. New shirt designs were created and uploaded to the store for the next several releases. The real bright light was the email software for my Jody Army finally got to a running state! More good things are afoot.

Yes, my production skills are coming in handy to help out some friends with a new VI (for those who don’t know, a VI is a virtual instrument). There’s a lot of things going on with this new instrument and I’m not at liberty to say what it is. There will be more from me on it, when I’m allowed to speak on it.

As the parade of releases continues, there are several new t-shirts that were added to the store in the last 24 hours. Particularly for this week’s release, Ties Are Truly Bound. I’ve opted to run 2 different versions. One is of the cover art, because it looks cool. The other is for lyrics, because we as a people, a country, a world, need to come back together as a species.

If you want to find a discount on something prior to release and during the first week release, it’s at the store and you can find it with a little digging.

My day/evening got kinda exciting yesterday when a project I’ve been working on for the Jody Army finally started standing up. It’s on about 2.5 legs, so it’s not public facing and it’s still a little wobbly in terms of what it’s doing. However, it is running and I’m in process of getting it set up. The initial test runs have worked and that has me fairly giddy.

Crazy that an email system is something a musician can get giddy over. As I’ve mentioned previously, this is a giant step in a long-view direction that I’ve been working toward. The Jody Army will not be housed on a 3rd party server. This is a major thing for me as I’m someone who values my personal information being only for those who I want to give it to and not being spied on.

I should have it ready to rock n roll with new features within a week. Or at least sending emails within the week. The really cool features are likely to take me another week or two. It will allow me to create a member’s only section to the website. I’ll also be able to connect with your streaming service of choice to do some really nifty things. Cutting edge stuff for you and I.

Not just boring email updates like everyone else.

I have the feeling it will be pretty darn epic. And as someone who likes to push boundaries in a good way, it’s gonna be something I will want to share far and wide. Much like the upcoming release on Friday – Ties Are Truly Bound. The updated mix and master sounds great!

2025-09-30
70 Weeks of New Music: Jody Whitesides Epic Re-Releases

I feel like you might be finding me for the first time, all over again. Not like I ever really went away, though playing live hasn’t been on the radar for the last couple of years while I was taking care of things behind the scenes.

TL;DR: As I’m ramping up into all of this, more things will come online and there is a lot of stuff to unpack as we go. Plus I will return to Social Media.

The Phoenix gave rise a few days ago. Hell, if you’re reading this by browsing by, you figured something out that people on my email list still haven’t heard yet. That my first re-released song happened last Friday August 22, 2025. It was quite the time in the making and I’m still spinning some wheels to get ahead of the curve.

Here’s the plot…

For the foreseeable future of about 70 weeks, there will be a new song released each Friday. Unless it’s a version of Do You Want to Play, which would release on a Tuesday. For each of those songs being rereleased, there is new cover art (because these came off albums, there wasn’t individual art the first time around). As an added bonus, there are animated versions of each cover, that currently only shows up on the website and on Apple Music.

There’s another new feature happening as well. That is, you can purchase a full quality WAV copy (i.e. 48/24, or 96/32) of the individual songs you like directly from me on my web store. Or the entire album. For either version of audio purchase, you will also get a link to the download a high quality MP3 version of it with the artwork embedded. Purchasing directly from me is the coolest thing you can do as there is no middle-man. It’s just you and I and the exchange of goods for payment. A true win win.

While I like Apple Music and Qobuz for their audio quality, you still can’t beat downloading the full WAV (and/or MP3) from me. It’s akin to sitting in the studio with me and hearing the true depth.

If there is enough of a cry from people, I will also make the Dolby Atmos versions available for sale, but hot damn those are extremely large files and I know of no-one actually selling them yet. Would love to set that trend, but would need to figure out the logistics of housing the files on the store.

Are you truly here for the first time? If so, joining the Jody Army will result in me emailing you a discount codes from time to time in the future to purchase most things on the store.

Cool items

Speaking of which, there are official transcriptions of all the guitar parts and all the bass parts for each song. I know when I was learning to play it was a real treat when Guitar for the Practicing Musician would have transcriptions in their magazine. It was the perfect combo of standard notation and Tablature. That concept has returned. Who better than the artist who played the material to do the transcription?

These transcriptions are done in standard notation and TAB. They are in PDF format, and the only official versions available. God I wish I had that when I was learning to play. Because with Guitar for the Practicing Musician, it was a crap shoot what they would transcribe from month to month.

Along this journey, each week there will be a new set of items on the front page, the store front, and the bio. That’s right, there’s a new bio each week to coincide with the release du jour. It’s been a tonne of work and it’s on-going.

At the end of this re-release path will be new music. That newer music will be releasing roughly about a year prior to it hitting streaming services. Meaning I’m looking at pressing CDs, Vinyl (for the first time) and Cassettes again. Hell, there’s a good chance I’ll do it for the re-releases as well. Nothing beats being able to open an actual tangible product and feel the weight in your hands.

Social Contact

Social media got you by the tits or balls? I can say from experience: it’s a good idea to take a break from it now and then. Which is essentially what I did whilst working on all of this material. As the wheels get back into motion for all of these re-releases, expect to see more posting on social media, whether you like it or not. Oh, and make sure you join BlueSky, it’s been a nice jump off the toxicity of Twitter (fuck Elon and the switch to X). Yes, that old Twitter/X account is there, however, I’ve deleted everything I ever tweeted, and it is no longer a platform that I will use.

Another stop coming along the connective journey between you and I is email. In the not-so-distant future I will be bringing my email list back in-house. It always made my skin crawl a bit to use an external email service, but at the time I made the jump – doing it in-house and by hand wasn’t a bowl of cherries.

Now that I have the updated server, I have found a software for doing email similar to the big boys, but without big brother watching over it, and without them telling me how I can use it. That will benefit both of us. Along with allowing me to tailor things just for you.

If you’ve hit this point, thank you for your attention into my career. It truly means a lot to me and I look forward to seeing you on the road again.

2025-08-26
Building a Better Music Year: My 2016 Game Plan for Songs, Videos, and Fans

Hello 2016

Happy New Year to ya. Its already time to say goodbye to 2015. In one way I’m wishing 2015 could keep going as its been a pretty good year. However, I’m already looking at 2016 as the launch pad for several great things to come.

New Music

Via Twitter I was asked by Jodsters if I’ll be releasing more singles in 2016. The immediate answer is yes. I have several new singles lined up and in the can. So to speak. Currently working on the video ideas to get them fleshed out and ready to release along side each single.

Along with that will be a better media presence. Gotta start stepping up the streams and plays for the newer music.

There will be one more push with Touch. The next single coming for release is called “Thump Thump Thump”. A juicy rich groove of a song that as some Jodsters have said “Make you want to move your feet in a happy manner.” I’m sticking to that funky audio lap-dance for your ears type of thing.

More Video

I got a killer gift for Christmas of a GoPro Hero4. Thus I will do my best to shoot more video and get it up on my YouTube channels and other social media. Should make it a lot easier to shoot, that’s for sure. The bonus is, I’ve recently met a couple of people and reconnected with some friends who do a lot of things behind the scenes with creating film/video. As I team up with them, it should lead to some really cool video output.

Plus, I’ve been asked to put my greatest guitar lesson on video. In case you didn’t know, I used to teach guitar lessons. There’s one super important lesson that no other teacher on earth ever teaches. Though I’ve long wanted to start a guitar lessons website geared around great lessons on playing guitar – I haven’t yet gotten around to it. Thus I will make sure this highly valuable lesson gets shot, edited and put up on my YouTube channel for everyone to enjoy. Lucky you it won’t cost you $100/half-hour to get it.

Dorian

Already on January 1 I had some fans asking about my dog Dorian. Telling me they’d like to see more pics and video of him. Thus if you’re down to see more of my dog, go follow his twitter account @dorianthedog. The more feedback he gets, the more video and pics he’ll deliver.

Beyond

There are a few things that are happening with the older catalog. If things go right, it will mean a nice payoff that will help springboard the new singles and more. Unfortunately have to be like Apple on this and not say anything further.

Goodbye 2015

Goodbye 2015. You’ve been really good to me with delivering a network TV theme. Nightwatch on A&E if you have not yet seen the show. Here’s to 2016 bringing me 3 more this year – that’s the goal.

2016-01-03

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