I've been laying pretty low over the past, well, almost 8 months... The last show I had lined up in 2019 I cancelled because I was sick and couldn't sing, let alone for 2 hours. I planned to hide out through the winter and work on new material, which I definitely have been, but I've been taking the hiding out part a bit too literally and haven't really been posting anything at all. Part of my excuse is that I was working on mixing a full length album for my ska/punk band, 4 Aspirin Morning, for about two month straight through the winter. I then had to be dedicated to practicing for the CD release show as we don't practice at all given two members now live in Portland, and one lives in Nashville. But I digress, the real reason I haven't been active with my solo work much is that I haven't been motivated...
Well, my goal is to change that moving through this year, starting with re-designing this website. You may have noticed a completely different look, and that's thanks to the new web hosting platform I moved to called Bandzoogle, which is set up specifically to work with musicians. I had been using a site called Hostbaby, but I never quite liked it. Now, I pay about half of what I did each year for my web hosting, and the functionality and integrated features of Bandzoogle are far superior to what I was using before. I'm very happy about this transition. I was actually looking at moving my platform, but was actually forced into moving because Hostbaby is not longer a thing, but they allowed user transition on to Bandzoogle, so I'm happy for this somewhat serendipitous inconvenience.I'm still tweaking some things and learning the ins and outs of this new platform, but it's pretty much ready to rock in a much sleeker way.
Now, this whole COVID thing is a whole different change to this industry, and quite frankly I'm nervous about what it will bring for the future of live music. I don't know when I'll be able to try and book any live shows (where I make most of my money), so now I'm looking into doing more online content, including LIVE STREAMING! For the first time ever, I'm going to do a live stream, and thanks to a good friend with a studio and Vimeo subscription, I'm looking to make that happen next weekend, 5/9/2020! I'll be getting more details out for this event soon. I'm going to his studio to hash out details and get our promo together tomorrow.
Aside from trying to get more live streaming and Youtube videos out to you, I want to make an attempt at bringing fans into my life more. I'm considering doing something like Patreon, but for the time being, I plan to share more of my creative process, be it through blogging or video clips, I want to show how I go about my process. This will include my writing both on guitar, and lyrically, my music gear, and my home studio setup. I might delve into sharing my mixing, but we'll see how far that goes once I get to that phase of my new album. I also want to share a bit more of my personal life including more non music relate things. More fun pictures of what I'm up to, and more of what I deal with with my day to day life experiences.
Now, I'm a fairly private person, so don't expect everything to come out, but I definitely want to give a good look inside to what it's like in a DIY musician's life in an attempt to connect more with you. I'm getting close to making the commitment to posting deeper quality content weekly (as opposed to once in a while whenever I maybe feel like it), however I'm not quite there yet. I burnt myself out with too many projects in 2019 and want to make sure I don't do it again so I can build up the momentum like I have before. I also recently made a big day job career shift (more on that in a different post), and it's been taking up a lot of extra time and energy. However, after being depressed for a few weeks from the shock of quarantine and regular life changing so much, I've been building up more and more of the ambition that I've had before. I have more and more song ideas coming into my head, and they feel new and fresh, and exciting.
I'm looking forward to getting back on the proverbial wagon with new expectations and inspiration, and I'm excited to share this all with you. More to come soon.