I caught a nasty cold a couple of days ago which really impacted any and all creative productivity. This was a disappointment, not because I was sick but because I was in the middle of producing a song that was going really well and had me pumped. Suddenly, I wake up Sunday morning and I’m trashed. So… life gave me lemons, and I love lemonade, so I decided go thru the videos that I’d remembered to take of shows I’d done, which isn’t many because it seems that a video camera is one of the last things I remember to bring to a show, and pull out the juicy bits and upload them to YouTube. There are quite a few songs that I need to process and upload, but for now I’ve uploaded the following:
Rhythma – I Am That, written by Sean Michael Imler
Rhythma – Going to War, written by Sean Michael Imler
Tarradiddle – Valentine’s Day, written by Marshall Mason
Tarradiddle – Walk Away Clean, written by Sean Michael Imler
The benefit concert for the Support Network (www.supportnetwork.org), the domestic violence program of the YWCA of Silicon Valley, is happening this Saturday! Every cent of your $20 will go to this cause, and the music will be great.
HARMONIES FOR HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS
An Intimate Evening of Acoustic Music
Saturday, November 13th, 2010 at 7:30pm
Mission City Coffee Roasting Company
2221 The Alameda, Santa Clara, CA 95050
Tickets $20, sold at the door only.
ARTIST LINE-UP:
Sean Michael Imler
Rhythma
www.rhythma.com
Rebecca & Gary Parks
www.rebeccaparksmusic.com
Tim Schwalbach & Mike Masuda,
The Incredible Shrinking Band
Daphna Rahmil
www.daphnarahmil.com
Even if you can’t make the show, please visit the Support Network website and consider volunteering or donating. I’ve been volunteering for almost two years now, and it’s been very rewarding to watch victims become survivors and take back their lives.
Well, you know I’ve been doing this solo thing for quite a long time now, and I love having guest musicians performing with me. However, I stumbled into a really great situation recently. I was having a hand analysis done by a talented man named Todd Zimmerman who combines palmistry with medical hand analysis to help you with life purpose information. It was very fascination and really accurate. Anyhow, after chatting for a while, turns out he’s a didgeridoo player and hand percussionist, and his group was looking to possibly add a guitar player. So I went and jammed with them and it was utter magic. The music combines my guitar and percussion with their amazing wooden flute player Kenneth Hooper, and bassist and percussionist Daryl Lowery. As you can see, there’s a lot of percussion and a great dance vibe. The music is world beat tribal rock (that’s my description anyhow).
We’ve done two gigs so far, one at the Campbell farmer’s market which was exceedingly well received, and another at The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology which was awesome. Everything is really fresh with us and much of what we play is improvised, but we’re starting to get a nice collection of songs together. But the vibe is awesome.
You can check out some music clips I’ve recorded on our new web site which we just launched yesterday.
Souljourne.com — Please sign up on our mailing list there.
This Saturday night, September 25, we’ll be playing a great show in Mountain View at 7:30pm at a yoga center.
Yoga Is Youthfulness Studio
590 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA
Tickets – $25
For tix and info, go to http://yogaisyouth.com or call 650-964-5277
I realize the ticket price is a little steep. It was set up before I joined the group and the yoga center set the price. However, I will make sure that no one is turned away for lack of funds. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a sliding scale, just ask for me. I want to encourage you to come out and join the experience. The energy will be beautiful and some wonderful spirits and angels will be present.
This is going to be a great night of music @ The Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga, CA on June 6th, starting at 6:30pm. It’s a benefit for my favourite charitable cause, Doctors Without Borders. Admission is a requested donation of $10 and 100% of the proceeds from the door will go to Doctors Without Borders.
Playing will be folk rock artist Rhythma, SF Bay Area’s power folk trio Tin Cat, and Americana singer/songwriter Chris Hanson. Food, wine and beer are available at the venue and there’s plenty of parking in the back if you can’t find it on the street. Get there early because seating is limited.
I got an email from my friend, Vincent Lowe about a week ago asking if I’d run sound for an event he was putting on at San Pedro Square Theatre in downtown San Jose. The event was called “Art Shots” and it was a small competition sponsored and facilitated by Artsopolis and Vincent Lowe to connect film makers to artists. The film makers would choose an artist that they wanted to interview and produce a 90 second film clip describing the artist. The event was the culmination of the competition, showing many of the films that were submitted and rewarding the winners. The grand price was awarded to ArtShots 2010, Carl Couchman.
The best part for me were the excellent live performances of artists from the competition, Amy Obenski and Tin Cat. I talked with the guys from Tin Cat and they’ve agreed to play with Rhythma at the Doctors Without Borders concert at The Blue Rock Shoot in Saratoga on Sunday, June 6th at 6:30pm.
Tarradiddle (Sean Michael Imler and Bill Mason) are playing a house concert with Gazingas at 7pm, Friday April 2nd in Sunnyvale, CA. Contact me if you’d like to attend and I’ll add you to the eVite. If you haven’t heard us, we play folk rock covers and similar originals, both on acoustic guitar with lush harmonies. There are a couple of tracks on mySpace.
I played a character in a short film called “Trail of Gold.” I also wrote an original song for the film and performed it in the film. The producer, Vincent Lowe posted a video on Youtube of the one take performance mixed as a vignette of scenes from the film. Unfortunately, the film’s editing wasn’t completed so you can’t see it in it’s entirety at this point and I haven’t cut this in the studio, but I was lucky to get this piece to share with you. I hope you enjoy it.
Wow, I can’t believe this is the ninth week! I have to tell you that I’ve played virtually no music over the last 9 weeks I’ve been so busy with all the changes I’m making. I think the foundation is laid from here on out and I’ll be able to focus a little more on the craft but there is a list of 22 things that I have to complete as of yet. For instance, I’m in the process of making ringtones which unfortunately, ReverbNation is doing a store overhaul so I can’t post them right now which is a bummer because I’m very excited about these. I did a test run of “Island of Misfit Toys” and sent it to my phone and I’ve shared it with a couple friends by having them call me, and watching their faces light up when it’s playing on my phone has been a very cool experience. I may look for another way to host them so keep a lookout for a service that will allow me to sell them either directly from my site or host them but give me an API that links back to their service. Oh, and by the way, that’s the topic of this week’s chapter in the book, what Ariel calls the “Continuum Program.”
Ariel really wants you to make money and doing it alone with just music isn’t necessary. That’s why she encourages you to look at other things you can provide to your customers like merchandise emblazoned with your logo, private shows, cheap downloads, or free downloads with email subscriptions (which I’ve already done). But she doesn’t stop there. She’s really trying to get you to think about how you can create an ongoing relationship with your customers, engaging them into a distribution funnel that starts with the inexpensive and capturing their interest by producing more exclusive products or programs that cost more money, but provide more exclusivity to them. I think that much of the thinking behind this is concurrent with a thread that she’s been writing about based on the 1,000 true fans theory that basically encourages you to find the right number of die-hard fans that are enraptured with your output. You cater to those fans with what they love about you and it’s a win/win: They support you by buying your products and you support them by being the creative you that you are.
There are a number of program ideas that the book suggests for keeping momentum with your fans and engaging new fans. Things like special exclusive events with the band, monthly gifts, artist critiques and even a private VIP fan website. I’m going to start out slowly on this because being one artist with a full-time job, I can only do so much and I really need to build a fanbase from the publicity work I’m doing from the last 9 weeks, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have made much of a different yet except that my mp3 sales are improving a little. But, I got a great idea from my friend, JC which is to try to sell prints of my artwork on FineArtAmerica.com. I’ve had some drawing on my website for a long time and I have hi-def slides as well so I’m gonna go get them re-digitized and post them hopefully within the week and see if I can’t sell some prints. I also have a number of drawings that are near completion that I’ll add to the mix and maybe I can combine some art sales with music sales. The proposition is exciting! So keep a lookout for that.
I also wanted to add that the end of the book has a couple bonus chapters on traditional PR and choosing the right publicist. I really found the traditional PR chapter to be quite interesting and wish that I’d seen it a long time ago. Ariel includes comments from a couple of journalists who write about musicians and gets some nice feedback from them about what they like and how they like to receive press kits to possibly write about. I’ve seen other articles along these lines but what stands out about this one is the immense detail about the press kit itself, representing that press kit on your web site, and the pertinent advice on follow-up. I myself have not done due-diligence on follow-up sometimes and I know that I’ve suffered for it. You have to do it which means you need to keep track of when and where and who you send something to and be ready to follow-up a couple of weeks later. I remember listening to a panel once of music reviewers for agencies and someone on the panel talked about their office. It had three boxes in it. The first box got all the mail-ins of CDs. If an artist made contact one time either by phone or email, someone would hunt down the CD in the first box and move it over to the second box. If the artist made a second attempt at contact or follow-up, the CD would be moved from the second box and into a box that actually sat on the reviewers desk where it would be reviewed. Sounds a little nuts until you see the wall of CDs on some people’s desks.
One thing I’m learning about the music business: It’s a little what you know, who you know, what you do… and how much endurance you have. This concludes our regularly scheduled program. Please stay tuned to find out how this big shift will play out in 2010. I’m really wanting big things to happen this year and I’m really hoping that the effort that I’ve put into this blogging contest has will pay off. I would love to be publicized by Ariel. She rawks and has truly been inspiring too me!
