So there are officially a ton of things going on. I haven’t been blogging with much regularity so I’ll just pound out 1275 words to catch everyone up.
I played at UCONN last night and it was OK. I got to hang out with my old college roommate Dan and his girlfriend Meghan (both of which went to NU but now go to grad school at UCONN) so that was nice. The show was small and low key. There were only a handful of people there. I was the third act of the night and played around 10:30. I pride myself on being personable and trying to get the crowd involved but they wouldn’t budge last night. They were all very shy and there were several awkward moments that I tried to egg them into conversation but it just wasn’t to be. All in all, it was a decent show. The UCONN people were nice and the sound was good good and I debuted my song “Missing,” which is coming together nicely and I think it’s going to become a good pop number. We’ll see how it comes out.
I’m also giddy about being back in the swing of the Faneuil Hall season. I’ve played twice all ready for two hours each (as opposed to my normal four hours) to start warming up for the full season. I’m now selling both “Songs (2007)” and “The Glory EP” and I have it priced so people can get both CDs for $10 so more often than not, people tend to get both CDs. I’ve all ready noticed a considerable spike in the amount of money I’ve pulled in and the weather hasn’t even been nice nor have there been any good crowds. Needless to say, I’m excited. I tried to pull in a base level amount last year so I could make a living but I might actually be able to save some money this summer (!!!) though we all know where that’s going—THE CD, which we’ll get to in a bit.
I’ve really pimped out my Faneuil Hall set-up. I’m trying to make things look as professional as possible so I brought a brand new table (it’s pretty huge) and a tablecloth along with a rug to put under my tip jar and a new laminated price sheet. I ordered a new banner too which I hope to get sometime this week. I’m pretty excited over the new set-up, which is pretty sad…
I’m also hoping to get the OK to play Faneuil Hall full band. I auditioned with the band last year and we didn’t get it (though I got it solo of course) but Cahill was allowed to play full band without an audition. It was kind of weird. I think there was a misunderstanding and it was kind of unfair but it is what it is. I’m hoping to get the green light because I think our exposure will be much more effective along with the fact that we’ll sell more CDs and hopefully make much more money. I’m hoping to be able to make enough money so Max can quit his teaching position in Wrentham and so Packer can quit his job. My fingers are crossed.
So the CD…I know, we’ve put out 3 EPs in the last year but this was all building up to the full length, which we hope to start in September. I need to start getting things lined up but it’s going to cost probably over $10000 so I need to figure out how I’m going to save up for that too. I’ve been working on writing new songs but they’re lacking the cohesion I think is needed for a full length but it’ll come together. I think we’ll re-record a few of the old songs–Anna, Tell My Story, Wreck, Time Is On Our Side, Peaks and Valleys are all in the running—but I am ALWAYS partial to recording new songs.
Brian Packer is interested in doing some of the recording but I haven’t heard much by him. At the very least we’ve talked about doing some demos to prepare for the CD with him. Will Dailey has also expressed interest in producing, which would be great because he has connections as well as the best sense of what I was going for when we recorded the EP last year. I know that I need to get started on it…Hopefully soon.
We’ve had this recent spike on My Space with new adds and plays. My interns—James and Tara—have helped get over 300 new adds since we started promoting the Syd show. I don’t know what kind of long term effect it will have but I’m interested to see.
We’ve also made the Semi-finals of the First Tracks Competition sponsored by Decca Label Group and Gather.com. We’re in the Top 25 acts out of 400 original acts. On April 14th I will hear if I’m in the Top 5. If I make it to the Top 5 then I travel to NYC with the band to record a song at The Living Room, which would be pretty sweet. From there, there is one more round of online voting : ( , which will decide the winner. I’m not getting ahead of myself though so I won’t say anything more about this competition until I hear…Well, one more thing to consider. We were able to average about 200 votes/day during the last round but to compete in the final round, we’d have to get about 1000 votes/day (which was slightly more than the top vote getter last round) so I need to figure out how to do THAT. I’m going to work with the interns to work on a marketing plan for that but everything is so abridged that it’ll be tough to organize things on such short notice. Once again, let’s wait and see.
THE LAST THING is that we are once again competing on OurStage. This time around, however, the stakes are even bigger! Bigger than the Paradise, that’s nuts! We’re competing in two channels which could land us on the stage of Boston Radio 92.9’s (formerly WBOS) Earthfest at the Hatch Shell and another could get us to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, which is kind of a big deal (Dylan first played electric there) and we’re in good shape! I’m coordinating efforts with James, Tara, Chris Michaud and Nicole Berke (the last two are other Danger Room Productions artists that I help book) and it’s working out fantastically. Right now in the Newport Folk Festival channel I have two songs that are ranked 1st and 3rd respectively (!!!) and Nicole is 2nd and 6th (!!!). In the Earthfest channel my songs are ranked 1st and 6th and Chris is 16th. Other friends are doing well too including Syd, Cahill, and Ryan Schmidt. We’re taking over but I hope to be on top. At this point it’s unlimited voting and there are over 150 for Earthfest and about 300 for Newport so if you want to spend some time checking out the competition and helping us out, shoot over there for a bit.
So that’s everything. I’m meeting up with my friend Gary on Tuesday. He used to do booking for Pete Kilpatrick and might be interested in working with me so that could potentially be good if I can get him committed. He’s a hard-working, resourceful, experienced person and I think he’s only like 20 years-old.
Yikes! I need to write more so I don’t write long blogs. I need to find a way to make things more easily digestible. Hope you enjoyed!
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