I’ve been working really hard lately, as a lot of you know. It’s a lot of work releasing a record! There’s the songwriting, the recording, mixing, mastering, marketing, promoting, booking, merchandising…and the list goes on.
I try to do as much of it as I can. I’ve always been a DIY kind of guy and if I don’t know how to do something, I try to learn how. So, when it came to these records, I did everything. From the recording, mixing and mastering, right down to the marketing and even merchandising (I’m pretty pumped about being able to screen print t-shirts!). I covered all costs by myself and was able to come up with some pretty neat packaging ideas in the process.
Anyway, all this hard work has caught up with me now that the EPs are out and I’ve played a bunch of shows to promote them. The CD Release show at the Monkey Wrench, which you can read about here, was a magical night. Not only were people still there to support me in spite of power outages, but everyone had the best time!
I played Nashville and was able to catch up with some old friends as well as make some new ones.
And tonight, I played at ear X-tacy, my favorite record store.
It was great to see so many familiar faces. I also got to meet some great new people too!
I met a little boy named Egan who liked my song “The Best Day Ever” and who told me about his dog Annabelle. He danced around and clapped through most of my set. It was awesome to see him having so much fun!
There was another little boy and his sister there for the show. I’ll tell you, the smiles on all of their faces make all that hard work worth it.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hard work, keeping up with analytics, crunching numbers, writing ad headlines, writing, recording… and it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters. When someone comes to me and thanks me for my music and tells me what it means to them, or smiles through a song because they can relate, that’s the real payoff.
So thank you for making what I love doing so rewarding.
