So, it is Wednesday, Oct. 15th, 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.
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.
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.
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’
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