fatrockstar

We will be debuting "St. Francis" at this show and giving away free download cards. For a donation to our album fund we'll happily part with a bona-fide CD.

I don't have any other shows lined up at this time. Given the nature of booking and my own health and personal challenges we may not play again for a month or two. Please come out and see us if you can, and bring a friend. Every person who comes to the show to see us brings us that much closer to our goal of better shows with bigger audiences. We don't suck, really we don't -- we're just not Metal (you wouldn't BELIEVE how popular Metal is in this town!)



Barring any issues we will go on at 4:30pm and play for about 35 minutes or so. After that is Blue Star Creeper, featuring singer/songwriter Kelly Blanchard, who I've known since about 1998 or so. The event will wrap up with our good friends Fae and The Captain with their band SeaStar. All good bands, all good friends, keep your fingers crossed for great weather!

I've been toying with the idea of download cards for a while. I think the only thing that kept me from doing it sooner was listening to Ethan tell me that people prefer to have a physical CD in their hands when they leave a show, insinuating I'd be wasting my money if I bothered.

He's probably right. I know if I'm going to buy music at a show I'd rather have something tangible, but I also know that it's got to somehow fit into my purse (if I brought one), and then I have to make room for it in my car, and eventually I'm going to rip it to my computer anyway...

A download card is environmentally friendly, a little cheaper than a regular CD, and fits in your wallet. You can always find me for a physical copy, and we'll still sell them -- this time around, though, you have options.

This Saturday (August 28) we will be playing at the West Seattle Eagles Club Hall for a Seattle Children's Hospital Benefit show at 7pm. We are headlining, which means we'll go on last. This isn't as bad as it seems, really -- the other acts are planned for only half an hour each, and the organizer has given us the green light to play a little longer if we want to.

Please come to my show. I will have CDs and other fun stuff to sell there.

If you see me on Facebook you know by now that my record is right around the corner. I finished the long-overdue artwork, waded through the submission and review process, and am now out $400 that I may or may not ever see again. Of the 100 physical disks I ordered, I will probably actually sell 80 of them -- that alone will allow me to break even. I am hoping that the digital distribution package I also ordered will result in more sales.

It feels odd to think of my music in terms of sales. It feels odd and cheap. I never expected to become famous or make a lot of money doing this, but it sure would be nice to not lose my shirt.

Digital distribution is requiring me to set up a bunch of accounts at CDbaby and a service called DigStation. It is my understanding that everything will also be available on iTunes, but I haven't received any info on that yet. So many things to do, and all of it seems to be happening at once. I know it will be worth it in the long run. I hope the wide net will find new fans all over the place. It will give me reason to keep doing this.

There are only six songs on my record. I would have loved to include more, but my band's crucial players always had something that kept them from making that happen. Ed, aside from being really fucking difficult to get into the studio to record any of MY songs, went broke. Ron and I couldn't see eye to eye on the mixes for the longest time, AND his day job often put the project on the back burner. It was a long and stressful process. I'm happy it's finally done, but also disappointed. A dozen of the songs I have played in public and love but am thoroughly sick of won't reach a wider audience. They had to be sacrificed for newer material and cover tunes.

I think my new recording project is already being scribbled on napkins and post-it notes. Much of it will be new, and the rest will be just archiving -- I feel that there are a number of songs that have fallen off our set list that have some commercial value and still want to shop them around.

So much to do... I need to update MySpace, try to get Troublefakers.com into some kind of presentable form, figure out email, etc.

If you haven't been to a show, come to one. If you have, but it's been a while, come again. We hope to play Bumbershoot 2010 and the Seattle Rock n' Roll Marathon/Half Marathon this year. They should be fun.

Now I just need to pull my head out of my ass and just enjoy the ride and the scenery..