Celebrating... kind of

So, it is Wednesday, Oct. 15^th, a little after 9am.  I am sitting in my basement right now, contemplating life and all that fun stuff.  Today is my birthday.  I am actually very happy to be at home today.  I love waking up in my own bed; getting in my own shower; cooking in my own kitchen; spending the time with my family.  But of course I am missing the stage a little bit too.  This damn blog isn’t called “The Road is My Needle” for nothing.  I’m sure I’ve said it before; that I miss home when I’m touring, and I miss touring when I’m home.  But today of all days, I’m happy to be at home.  It is tough being on the road on your birthday: random hotel room, some crappy restaurant for dinner, no birthday cake!  So while I miss being on stage and singing and performing and all that, I am very happy to be away from all that today and just spend the day relaxing at home.  Funny, I say ‘relaxing’, and here I am blogging. 

You know, birthdays are kind of bittersweet for me.  On the plus side, I’ve survived another year without any serious injury or death; can’t complain about that.  Also, generally people are nice to me on my birthday.  Plus, there are the 400 happy birthday messages on Facebook, which is nice to see that people care enough to send a message or post on the wall or whatever.  Again, there’s usually cake involved, which is always awesome.  I do love cake.  Who am I kidding, I love sugar; and anything with sugar in it.  No wonder I can’t lose those 15 lbs. I’ve been trying to get rid of for the past couple years.  Oh, and there’s presents.  We all love getting presents.  So there are up sides to having a birthday. 

But as many reasons as there are to celebrate, I always seem to be a little down as well on my birthday.  I don’t know how it is for other people, but my birthday and New Year’s always get me thinking about missed opportunities and things I haven’t accomplished; goals I haven’t met.  I don’t know why I am this way, but I am.  Maybe it’s the downfall of being a planner and being goal oriented.  When you plan things out and set goals for yourself but don’t meet them, it brings you down.  Well, it does for me anyway.  And I set my goals pretty high.  I am of course talking about career goals here, but there are also personal goals and achievements that I have set and not accomplished this year as well.  I just don’t think this is the forum to discuss those.  I think it is better to stick with career oriented discussions on here.  There are some goals that as a band we did meet: we put out a new album this past January; we’ve made certain strides as a group and have been moving in the right direction; we have played some new places and gained some new fans.  But because I expect to meet all the goals I set for myself, I tend to focus more on those goals I wasn’t able to accomplish this year: radio airplay being a big one.  Also, making a giant leap with our career; gaining national attention.  Having a song that is ‘the song’; one that just hits.  Things like that.  I know, today is the one day I should forget about all that stuff and just be happy to be alive and healthy, but I am always thinking about and conscious of what I need to be doing with my career.  Milestone days actually make it harder when goals have not been met or accomplished.  That’s just the way I am with stuff like this. 

I don’t tell you about this stuff for pity.  I have plenty of that for myself, and don’t wish to have yours on top of my own.  Ha.  I describe my thoughts to you on here because that’s part of what I think this weblog is about, and because I become painfully honest on here and it is a great forum for me to just let it out.  But on days like today, I do really evaluate where we are as a group, and where I have been successful, as well as where I have been unsuccessful.  I really look at ways we (or I) can improve, and how.  Doing what we’re trying to do can be a daunting task, but I continue to hope it is worth all the work and struggles and the let downs.  I’m sure it is worth it.  I continue to be reminded of that when we get positive feedback from you all; hearing that you’re enjoying what we do makes it worth it.  Watching you sing along at the shows inspires us.  Knowing that there are people out there that give a damn about our music and our lives keeps the whole thing running. 

So, as I’m sitting here on my birthday typing away (in between receiving birthday messages on FB and the phone calls and text messages), thinking about all these things that I’ve just mentioned, I have decided that I am going to ask you all for help.  To be fair, you have already given us so much by showing up to our shows and buying our merchandise and liking our songs, but I’m going to ask for more.  Hey, if you can’t ask people for a little something extra on your birthday, when can you?  I actually have two things to ask from you all today.  These are my birthday wishes, if you will:

 

FIRST THING: We are looking at next year’s calendar and are trying to schedule more festivals and fairs and stuff like that for next spring and summer.  We need to start doing this now though.  So what I’m asking from you is this: if there is a festival or fair or any other special entertainment opportunity in or around your area where you would like to see us perform, send me a message with the name of it, when it occurs, and the location.  If you know the person or people in charge or that do the booking for the event, send us that info as well.  The more possibilities we have, the more likely we are to get back to your area more often.  So send me anything and everything you can think of.  I’ll have our booking agency check all possibilities out.  So anything in your area, EMAIL me and get me the information.  We will try to take care of the rest.  And if you’d like to go even further with this idea, once you’ve sent us the info, contact the event and let them know you want us to come there and play.  A lot of events have a Facebook page now; post a message about us on their wall.  Most festivals also have websites now too, and on the websites are contact pages; take a moment to email them as well and let them know how much fun it would be to have us play there. 

EMAIL: michaeldband@gmail.com

I hope you all will take a few minutes to think about the festivals in your area and email the info to me.

SECOND THING: like I am always talking about, our most pressing and immediate need is to continue to increase our fan base; to get more people exposed to us and our music.  While we are constantly trying to spread the word and get more people involved, realistically people are more interested in something new when they hear about it from their friends.  So I am asking you to take a few minutes this evening (or better yet, right now so you don’t forget) and share us with all your friends.  I am of course talking about social media here.  Social media continues to be a very productive way for promoting music and artists, and I hope you’ll help us out with this. 

I’m asking for two things with this today: 1. Get on your Facebook page, find our FAN PAGE, and invite all of your friends to like our page. 

If you’re on your computer, you just go to our Fan Page, and on the left side of the page directly under the profile picture is a small box that says “People” in the upper lefthand corner.  At the bottom of the box is a link ‘invite your friends to like this page’.  Click on that link, and then hit the “INVITE” button for every person that comes up. 

If you’re on your phone, again you go to our Fan Page, scroll down to the box that has the number of likes we currently have, and click on the link that says ‘invite friends to like this page’.  From there, again, just hit the “INVITE” button for every person that comes up.  Make sure you scroll down throughout your entire friend list and get all of them for us. 

When you’re done with that, please send me a personal message on our fan page telling me you invited all your friends to ‘Like’ us.  That way I will know who helped us out and can say thank you. 

Also, make sure it is our Fan Page you’re inviting them to like.  We also have an old regular page.  You can tell the difference because the fan page says ‘liked’ on it, and the old friend page says ‘friends’ on it. 

FACEBOOK FAN PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-D-Band/308491272553342

The other thing I’m asking for with this involves Twitter.  If you have a Twitter profile, make sure you find us on there if you’re not already ‘Following’ us.  If you are already ‘Following’ us, tag us in a tweet or two over the next week, so all your followers have access to our page as well.  Let everyone know what you like about our music.  Or hell, even just retweeting our posts is a great way to get our name out there in Twitter-land.  Getting the word out like that is such a tremendous help for us. 

Again, once you’ve done so, make sure you EMAIL me and let me know so I can express my gratitude. 

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/themichaeldband

So, if you would take some time this evening and do those two things for me, it would make it a great birthday for me.  Just those few little things would really go a long way to helping us continue to move forward with this band. 

I know this is not a typical 'journal entry'.  We have been off the past week and I had nothing to report on from our travels, but I felt like writing today.  So this is what i came up with; those were my thoughts throughout the day.  We head back out on tour tomorrow, so hopefully next week I can get back on track with stories and thoughts from the road.  

 

Well, someone asked me recently about a song I wrote several years ago that we used to play at our shows. The title is “Somewhere North Of Tennessee”.  I hadn’t heard or thought about that song in a long time; it was nice to know that someone remembered it after not hearing it for so long.  The person asked if I had ever recorded it.  I do have a recording of it, but had never released it.  I’ll have to go back and listen to it soon.  The recording is about 6 years old from a studio in central Kentucky.  I haven’t heard it in years.  If it’s decent, I might have to release it to I-Tunes as a single.  Well, we’ll see about that.  I’m not sure too many people out there are interested in songs from my past like that. But who knows, I may try it and see.  Anyway, since I brought it up, I guess that should be my song quote for the week.  So below is the chorus from that song. 

As always, be safe out there.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday. It is nice to know that people out there care enough to take a few moments for another person.  Hope to see you all at a show soon. 

“Somewhere north of Tennessee, there’s a girl who waits for me

To find myself, and someday I will. 

Every day I come to find, if I wake up the sun’s going to shine

And I know, no matter where I go

It just might be the path that leads me home”

-          ‘Somewhere North Of Tennessee’

Too Many Long Drives

This past tour ended with basically a 24 hour drive home.  We finished our show Saturday night, tore down our gear, loaded it in the van, and hit the road.  I’ve written in previous entries about my feelings of driving overnight to get to places, so I won’t go into the whole rant again.  A lot of times we drive overnight to get back home so that we can get home at a decent hour the following day.  But this time we were so far from home that we drove overnight, all throughout the next day and halfway through the next night just to not lose another day at home.  It was a looooonnnnnnggggg drive.  And we’re only home for a few days b/c we have shows scheduled for this coming weekend, so it was extra important for us to get back as quickly as possible to maximize our time at home before heading back out for the weekend.  Also, when you’ve been out on tour for five straight weeks, you really want to get home and back to your own bed and your family for a few days.  I’m guessing Josh, with a new baby at home, was more anxious than the rest of us combined to get back to his family.  But this is all stuff from just a few days ago; I haven’t written for over two weeks, so I need to back up and pick up where I left off at the end of the last entry.

(I wrote this first paragraph while at home fully expecting to have more time to continue and finish this entry while at home for those few days.  That didn’t happen; so now I’m back in the van.  It’s Friday morning, and we’re heading toward Madison, WI for tonight’s show at Red Rock Saloon.  We’re actually getting ready to pass through Chicago as I’m typing this.  We’ll see if I can get this all done today before we get to Madison.)

Okay, now to figure out where I left off a few weeks ago.  Oh yeah.  Got it.  So, our last show was in Fargo, and we were scheduled to head southwest from there to Colorado and New Mexico.  We left Tuesday morning of that week with plans to stay in Denver that night, and then continue to southern CO for our show that Wednesday.  It was a long boring drive from North Dakota down to Denver.  No need to go into any detail about that.  I got some reading done, and probably watched a few movies that I’ve seen a hundred times.  That is one of the down sides to traveling so much: while I have a ton of movies at home, we travel so often that I’ve seen them all way too many times.  I know I’ve seen Lonesome Dove at least 20 times the past couple years; and Tombstone; and Dazed And Confused.  But from time to time Josh happens to procure a new movie for us, so that helps.  The plus side of being in the van so much is that I have had the opportunity to read a ton more books than I’ve ever imagined.  Right now I’m actually reading one called ‘The Bluegrass Conspiracy’ that Kevin let me borrow.  There’s some pretty intriguing stuff in this book.  Anyway, I’m off topic already (go figure).  So, we traveled all day that day to get to Denver, and made it that night at a decent hour.  When we pulled up to the hotel though, there were cop cars in the parking lot and what looked like some shady activity going on in one of the rooms.  How do we always find ourselves in the middle of stuff like this?  Ha.  Turns out the people only paid for one night and were trying to get an extra night free out of the hotel, so the cops were there to escort them out.  But still, you get that uneasy feeling when you pull up to the place you’re supposed to feel comfortable sleeping and there are police cars in the parking lot. 

The next day we got up and went across the street to the Village Inn for breakfast, because the Village Inn has ‘free pie Wednesday’, and who doesn’t love a free slice of pie.  Afterward, we had about a three hour drive south to Walsenburg, CO for the show that night.  Every time I say or write the name Walsenburg, I can’t help but think ‘Heisenburg’.  It must be because we were heading to Albuquerque the next day.  So, we made it to town and found the venue.  It was a small bar in a small town on a Wednesday night.  There are two ways this night was going to go down: either it was going to be dead and the night was going to be a bust; or it was going to be slammed and a blast.  Fortunately, it was the latter.  Here’s what I enjoy about small towns (and I’m sure I’ve probably written about this before too): people in smaller towns are craving live entertainment.  We can come into a small town on a Wednesday night and people will come out and party because it will be better for them than whatever is going on that weekend.  It is worth it for them to be tired at work the next day.  That makes for an easy night for us; they are already excited and looking to have a good night.  All we have to do is not suck.  And that’s the way the night went; we did our thing, they showed up, enjoyed the music and partied with us.  It was a really fun night.  I hope we get to go back there this spring when we head back down to the southwest. 

On a side note: the people that we stayed with cooked for us twice.  A home cooked meal beats a fast food burger any day of the week!

From there we headed down to Albuquerque and back to the Dirty Bourbon Saloon.  Spending three days in Albuquerque in mid-September isn’t so bad.  It was in the 80’s every day with no clouds.  Gotta love that.  We played there Thursday through Saturday.  Thursday is supposed to be there big night, because its ladies night or college night or something like that.  Maybe both.  Anyway, it was slammed that night.  On Friday, Jason Aldean was in town at the fair (or something), so after his show let out a ton of people came over to our show, so Friday was slammed too.  Friday was actually uncharacteristically busy for them; which is great for us.  Then Saturday night was even more busy than their used to as well.  It turned out to be a great weekend for us.  We had huge crowds the entire time.  The cool thing about this venue is that people are there to dance.  There’s a huge dance floor, and people are always on it.  The negative thing for us as a band trying to gain a fan base is also that they are there to dance.  Sure we get our name out there and our music to hundreds of people each night, but it seems like for the most part they are more interested in finding a partner and dancing than they are in who the band is or how they sound.  I get it, they have a lot of good bands come through there on a weekly basis.  But one of the things we like is being able to interact with our crowd, and that’s just not a big thing for the people there.  We gained a few fans throughout the weekend, and hopefully as we go back more we will become more popular and gain an even bigger following.  Or maybe I’ll have to get creative and figure out a way to get their attention and set us apart from all the other good country acts that roll through there. 

We left on Sunday heading back up north.  We had a private event scheduled back up in North Dakota the following weekend, so we needed to make our way back up there.  From Albuquerque back up there is right around a 20 hour trip (without stops).  It’s fair to expect another 2 – 3 hours added on for food and bathroom breaks on a trip that long.  Basically it is almost a complete 24 hour day long trip.  Secretly, I was hoping that we would break up the trip into two days so we could get a good night’s rest, but I was outvoted on this one and we ended up driving through the night to make it back up north.  We saved money on hotel rooms that way, and it was nice to actually get to our destination and not have to waste another day in the van, but damn those all day and overnight drives are brutal. 

We made it to the last week of our 5 week tour.  With four more shows to go, we were all looking forward to heading back to our homes for a couple days to recharge. 

We had two days off, and our work week started on that Wednesday night in Beulah at the Nite Owl.  I like this place.  It is yet another small bar in a small town, but the people here are really appreciative of what we do.  They like our music, dance at our show, and buy our merchandise.  I always enjoy getting to the show and seeing three or four people out in the crowd wearing our shirts.  We hadn’t been there in a while, and people seemed anxious for us to get back there, so we had a lot of people there that night and it turned out to be a fun show. 

Oh, funny story from that day.  Well, I thought it was funny.  There are not a lot of places to eat in Beulah, so we always go to Jimmy’s Pizza when we’re there.  I even made up a jingle about Jimmy’s Pizza.  We think it is hilarious, but it is completely inappropriate so I won’t be printing the words here.  Anyway, Josh and I walked up to Jimmy’s Pizza to eat, and I knew that Steve would be ordering from there and having it delivered.  So after our dinner, I asked the lady behind the counter if there were any orders for a guy named Steve being delivered to the hotel where we were staying.  She confirmed that there was, so I explained that it was for a friend of ours, and asked if she’d be willing to put a note in the package for me.  I needed her to write the note though so it would be female hand writing and hopefully be more convincing.  She was on board for the gag, so we had her write a quick note that said something like “Hey big boy, I can’t wait to see you at the show tonight; lets hang out afterward” then she drew a heart at the bottom.  Yes, I know this is cheesy and childish and will never work, but I get bored and like to mess with people.  Josh and I waited all night for Steve to mention the note or see if he was at least looking around for some woman at the show; but he apparently knew it was us the whole time.  Foiled again.  Oh well, it was entertainment for me for a few minutes. 

On Friday we played up at a place just a few miles from the Canadian border.  We had played there once before, several years ago.  Actually, this is the place where I jumped in the river naked for $100.  No, that did not happen this time!  It was a completely different place than when we had played there before though.  A flood had wiped out everything around there about 3 years ago, and it was under new ownership and they had completely rebuilt everything.  The noteworthy thing here happened on the load in: Josh found a snake.  I am not a snake person.  I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to be near them, I don’t want to hold them.  Nothing about snakes is appealing to me.  I don’t even want to go through the snake exhibit at the zoo.  Musicians like to play jokes on each other, but my guys know that if they ever pulled a prank on me that involved snakes (fake or real), they will be fired immediately.  I get the mechanics of how a snake moves, but it still just freaks me out that they can move that fast and efficiently without legs.  I don’t mind spiders, lizards, anything else with legs; but snakes slither, and that creeps me out.  Anyway, Josh found a snake nearby in the grass as we were loading in our equipment, and had to pick it up to show everyone.  The problem for me was that when we was done, he just tossed it about 15 feet away.  That’s not near far enough for me.  I would have preferred he took it down the road a mile or so.  But no, he had to keep it nearby where it could just slither its slimy little body back over to where we were unloading.  Needless to say I had my eyes on the ground in front of me the rest of the time searching for any movement as I walked along. 

Well, that pretty much takes us back to the beginning of this entry to the long overnight trip back home. 

A few more things to discuss for this entry: First, we were scheduled to go back out to Las Vegas for the Professional Bull Riders World Finals toward the end of October.  I found out recently that those shows had been canceled.  I don’t have an exact reason why we got canceled though.  I know the World Finals are still going to take place, but a concrete reason was never provided to me as to why we suddenly wouldn’t be playing there this year.  We have done the gig three other times in the past, and I feel we have done a really good job for them.  Hell, we even provided the Sound system for one of their stages last year; and another year before that.  I don’t mind that a gig gets cancelled, it would just be nice to know why; and to have more than a month’s notice on something that big and that far away distance wise.  I know the other guys were a little bummed about it too.  It is not so much about losing the gig, but Vegas is a fun place to be for a week.  There’s obviously a ton to do there, and we had a lot of free time each day.  Plus, Steve had never been to the Grand Canyon, so we were planning a trip to see it either on the way out to Vegas or on the return trip back.  I guess if I’m looking for the silver lining though, at least we don’t have to drive all the way out there.  That is a long time sitting in the van (and you know how I feel about that); plus we don’t have to spend the money on fuel to get out there.  Anyway, if some of you bull riding fans out there were planning on seeing us out there again this year, I’m sorry to say we won’t be there as previously planned.  Okay, enough about that. 

Let’s talk about our merchandise for a minute.  This is the last weekend we will have the Pink ‘Let’s Get Rowdy’ Women’s Shirt available.  After 3 years, we are discontinuing that product.  So for all of you ladies out there that have bought that shirt and wore it to shows over the past few years, we’d like to thank you.  Oh, and in three days that shirt becomes vintage. 

Also, we have officially sold out of our “Show a Little Skin” Women’s Tank Tops.  Assuming there is a demand for them, we will bring them back later next spring; or maybe even come up with some new tank top idea, who knows.  Hell, maybe we should have our female fan base vote on what they’d like us to come out with next year. 

For now we have a few new products coming out starting with our next tour.  We have added a new color to our ‘logo’ shirt: a really nice blue color.  Also, to replace the discontinued ladies shirt, we have added a female cut ‘logo’ shirt for the women too.  I took a chance on the color for this one, so I’m anxious for input from our female fan base.  I’m hoping it will be well received, but we’ll see. 

A lot of people have been asking about hoodies and long sleeves as well, so we’ve been looking into that for later this fall and the winter season.  We’ll see if we can swing it or not.  I actually did find a company that would be able to keep the price point down for us.  The problem I was having in the past was keeping the cost of hoodies low enough to make them affordable for our fans.  I didn’t feel comfortable charging $45 or $50 for a piece of merchandise.  But with the new price points I found earlier this week, we may be able to do hoodies at a reasonable cost to everyone.  So we’ll see what happens later this fall. 

Well, I feel like I’ve been pretty productive with writing this entry in the van today.  We made it through Chicago and are almost to Rockford.  Less than two hours to go to get to Madison.  Hopefully after set up I have some time at the hotel to post this.  If not, then Saturday morning for sure.  But I’m shooting for this evening. 

As always, I want to remind everyone about all of the online avenues with which to keep up with us. 

www.themichaeldband.com

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

EMAIL

I-TUNES

As always, we hope to see you at a show soon.  And keep letting me know if you’re reading this blog.  It’s always nice when new people come up and tell me they’re reading, and that they enjoy the writing.  Until next time, be safe out there.