Working Title

Category: Music

  • Benbow night 2 postscript

    The show Friday was lots of fun, thanks to everyone who came out and stuck around, and to Sam for drumming. We’ll be there again this Friday in the form of An Invitation to Love.

    One last thing about last week though: the Autonomics were added to the bill at the last minute and were pretty great. They’re three 21-year-olds living the dream, practicing 6 nights a week and playing everywhere. And it shows. They play “Shit Luck” as well as Modest Mouse themselves do and you should see them.

  • Night 2 of Benbow “residency” tonight

    What an odd looking title that is. Let me explain.

    The Benbow Room is a bar inside the Heartland Cafe in West Seattle (4210 SW Admiral Way). Rock shows are now happening in that bar now, and for some reason I will have played there three Fridays in a row.

    My first show was last week, and Sam joined me on drums. We only played a few songs as it was a 5-band bill, but it was a fun night.

    Tonight I’ll be playing longer, and hopefully Sam will be able to join me again. I’m opening for Andrew Norsworthy and James Germain and the Grey Gray Days. Here’s a flyer:

    Then next week An Invitation to Love will be there, with Rosyvelt and the Chasers. I got a flyer for that one too:

  • Band news… An Invitation to Love

    That’s band news, not bad news. The opposite, actually: our EP is finished, and posted up on Bandcamp and on our website, and boom! Right here:

    [wp_bandcamp_player type=”album” id=”674982348″ size=”grande” bg_color=”#FFFFFF” link_color=”#4285BB”]

    It’s free, so go download it and blast it in your car stereo. There are still some things to do, like pick a cover image, and send copies to press and radio, and plan a release show. Those are just details. We already got some press, from the not-at-all-conflicted ball of wax blog. Thanks Levi!

  • Blogging frequently

    I get a lot of spam from the various services I’ve signed up with over time that are supposed to help you sell music. Companies like CD Baby, Fanbridge, Tunecore, Jango (which I’ve yet to use), etc. have mailing lists where they advertise their latest features, and they usually include “industry advice” essays from various experts on how to make the most of new media marketing and social networking to “connect with your fans.”

    One thing that comes up repeatedly in these essays is the importance of frequent blogging and tweeting. Fans, apparently, want to know that you’re a fantastically interesting person with special thoughts and keen insight — how else did you write those songs they put on their ipod? It’s important not to blog only about the shows you have coming up or the single you’re trying to sell. Write about what crazy thing you did last night, or that weird conversation you overheard on the bus, or those words you live by from the Bhagavad Gita. You know, crap full of meaning. Then fans will find you engaging and will have you on their minds, then you can drop in a casual reference to your upcoming show, and then profit.

    This is all fine and good, and makes sense, but it’s odd advice, that one must produce the appearance of ingenuity and wit. There’s something very un-genuine about it. But at the same time, some people were born for microblogging. I see their Facebook posts every day — these people just have interesting random thoughts and know when and how to put them into a pithy tweet (comedian Dartanion London is a great example). I imagine that for them this works, that their fans do keep them in mind and are more inclined to listen to their recorded output and go to their shows.

    On the other hand, I’ve yet to see a correlation between micro/macro blogging talent and music talent. Moreover, as a music fan, I’m annoyed when a musician has tons of blogging output, as it means more stuff I have to wade through to get to something I care about. And then, some people aren’t funny, or particularly interesting, and sometimes they write things that ruin their careers (Scott Adams being this week’s example).

    So I guess that if I were writing one of those essays, I’d say that frequent blogging is only good if you’re good at it. If you’re not, then you should probably keep it down. I hope the future of musician success isn’t dependent on Twitter savvy, but if it is, so be it. I for one suck at Twitter, so I’ll stick with random luck and wishful thinking, thank you very much.

    Ahem, by the way, I have a show coming up: the Ball of Wax #24 release at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, May 11, 2011, 9pm.

  • An Invitation to Love Monday, more radio adds

    My rock band An Invitation to Love is playing on Monday the 29th at the Comet Tavern here in Seattle. You should go. After some thought we figured we should have a mailing list for that band so I can stop spamming the graze list.. you can sign up for that now at www.aninvitationtolove.com. That band also has a couple of new recordings to put up on that site, I’ll be doing that after I do some more mixing.

    Other news: Give/Sell was added to a couple more Northwest radio stations, KZUU in Pullman WA and KGRG in Auburn WA. If you’re in those neighborhoods call them up and request something. They might just play it.