i’ve been rather delinquent with my blogging because there has been little to report. but i’m going to try and tell you about what’s been going on anyway.

itunes:
i still await the first statement so i still don’t really know what’s going on there. should be may or so i think is what i remember saying. however, i have been getting more reviews and ratings from listeners which has been great. it doesn’t look so forlorn now as it once did. so thanks, to all of you who have taken the time to do that so far.

cds:
there have still been a trickle of sales here and there from the website, so it hasn’t completely stopped there yet! just mostly. i’ve also been bartering occasionally with other artists – a few friends of ours have written books and we’ve done some swaps which has been fun.

playing out:
with the initial boom of the sales dying out i’ve been turning my attention more toward finding places to play. at this point i’m open to anything, whether that’s playing solo somewhere or with the band or a piece of the band. (speaking of….i haven’t really mentioned the band yet, have i? i will do that soon in a future post). some friends of mine are trying to start an artist agency that they’ve been talking to me about and they’ve been doing a lot of groundwork trying to get me some places to play, which is cool. most of it is just possibilities, but some of it is in the works and is very likely going to happen. a lot of things seem to be mostly unpaid at this stage of the game – which is probably standard fare i’d guess when you’re not signed and no one has heard of you.

that said, if any of you know of any events or church functions or concerts or anything where i or we can play do let me know – like i said, i’m open to anything!

general:
if any of you are songwriters, you may have heard of organizations that are specifically for songwriters, most noteably ASCAP and BMI. they are sort of songwriter organizations, and if you write songs you register with them and they handle royalties and do some other stuff that i’m not sure about. anyway travis was telling me when we were finishing up recording that they both have atlanta offices and that i should try to meet with them. so actually just earlier today i scheduled a meeting with someone at ASCAP to talk about what they do for their members and for me to ask some questions about applying. so that’s next tuesday – should be interesting.

also with a few people expressing interest in booking i started thinking about how to handle that. bethany said she’d be game to be in charge of all that, since it seemed kind of weird to have someone call me directly about booking information. so i ended up using google voice (which is awesome, by the way) to set up a separate phone number/voicemail thing where people can call and leave messages and get info. it worked out pretty well; now all i need is for people to want to start calling it for some reason. ’

travis also suggested i look into the possibility of getting my music into christian movies. that huge church that made all the fireproof / facing the giants type movies is apparently here in georgia, in albany. i checked them out online looking for someone to ask about music and it ended up being a dead end. they put up there pretty clearly that they’ve got all the music covered for all their films and don’t accept submissions. not sure i agree with that policy….but i do understand it i think.

there’s also a magazine i get through church, called Worship Leader that is pretty good – i enjoy a lot of the articles and stuff, and some of it helped out a lot when i was writing. anyway, if you are a member of this sub-program of theirs called Song Discovery then with each issue (they do 8 issues a year, i think) they send you a cd with like 15 or so new (or new-ish) songs on it. i love it as a worship leader because it helps keep new stuff coming to me and lots of it ends up being good to use at church. anyway, i found out you can submit songs to them – they get a different panel of listeners together between each issue and they listen to every submission and decide on ones to include. so i got the info and mailed them a cd. the guy said i’d be in consideration for the may or june issue, so that’s one more potentially exciting thing i’m waiting on. they’re supposed to call you if they are going to use one of your songs, so……here’s hoping!

emotions:
i have a lot of ups and downs. on the up sides it’s exciting – as one of my friends said the other day, it seems like any moment you could get a call that changes everything. at some moments that seems true and it is exciting to say the least.

on the other side, though, it’s easy to doubt what i’ve done. i remember when i was writing my doubts always centered around the songs themselves – are they any good? will they say anything to anyone? that kind of thing. now they seem to have proven themselves a bit more and my doubts now center around the execution of the record. it’s easy to play the comparison game with other records. to a seasoned listener, you can readily tell that i did this record on a budget – as compared to a signed artist who spent likely upwards of 20-30k making their record. you could also probably tell that it was my first time making one.

in light of all that it’s easy to wonder: is it going to be enough? did it need to be picture perfect the first time to have a chance at being successful? is it an opportunity missed before it even started because of money? if you believe in an all-powerful God (which i do) then the answer to those should be pretty readily apparent: money, or the lack of money, can’t stop someone all-powerful from doing anything. pretty sure he can make something successful regardless. of course it all depends on one’s definition of ‘success’….

i digress.

all that to say that it’s easy sometimes to feel like getting people to notice your music is a pretty insurmountable mountain unless you’ve got connections.

in the end, who really knows? we march on toward what is ahead. because it could be anything.