The best laid plans of mice and men…….
Or is that layed, or lain or …..pfffft…. someday I plan on getting someone to be an editor. Ability to spell and know grammar required……
Yeah, another plan that may or may not come to fruition…….
Musicians always have LOTs of plans. In fact you need a plan for almost everything these days. Like most days I plan to get out of bed. That plan generally goes the intended direction. On weekends I “plan” on sleeping late…. yeah, that plan rarely works out for me either….. (ok, I’m rambling here and need to get to the point.)
We’ve kind of had a plan all along. Mostly, our plan is to write and play music. We have planned to NOT be a bar band and try to stick with festivals and showcase type stuff. That plan has been pretty easy to accomplish. All we did was just not try to book any bar gigs. You don’t ask, you don’t receive….
Another plan was to record some albums. First one finished and slowly writing songs for the second. Another successful plan….
We planned to do a video. BOY now that plan worked out REALLY well…. in the process we met an awesome videographer AND we’ve managed, completely on our own, to get it onto a National TV Broadcast. Waaaaa Hooooooo! Sounds like we’re on a roll here…..
There are other plans currently in operation. Our website being able to offer merchandise for sale has mostly been accomplished. Selling a bunch of merchandise….. well, we’re still working on that one. We’ve got merchandise but it’s not really flying out the door like we would like. So….. as an ongoing critique that plan is kind of almost working as “Planned”…… stay tuned for more on that one. We need this plan to succeed in order to pay for other “plans”……
We’ve had other plans. For instance, we’ve reached out in multiple directions to find a manager to replace the one we had. The whole problem with that plan is so far no one that we would be comfortable working with has surfaced. I’ll go into some detail another time about why a manager would be a real asset to our “plan”….. lol…
So, now we’re working on a plan for New Orleans. We’ll be down there at a time that the French Quarter will be full of entertainment industry people. Record Producers, MANAGERS, Record Company A&R reps and executives, Entertainment Law Attorney’s etc etc etc…. it will also be FULL of musicians trying to get noticed by these people.
Yeah, and I’m sure everyone of them has a plan too…….. so now we’ve got battling plans going on. Geeeesh, could it get more complicated?
Now our plan has to not only include enough money to pay for this trip but it also must include doing something to stand out from the crowd of musicians trying to get noticed. I was thinking of shaving my butt and walking backwards for 3 days while in New Orleans but that began to sound dangerous and I don’t think my butt looks that good anyway. Also, don’t think I’ll have any luck trying to convince Jeana this is a great plan for her…….
So, I wonder what we CAN get away with?
We’ve approached some PR and marketing firms in the New Orleans area. This is a great plan but we would need to sell completely out of CD’s and t-shirts in order for that to happen. Let’s see…. at the rate they are currently selling we can probably PLAN on doing something in New Orleans in a few years but not next month…..
Problem is that the Cutting Edge people expect us in New Orleans next month. We PLAN on being in New Orleans next month too……. (insert emotiocon for extreme headache from thinking to much here.)
So…… are you thinking we have a plan for New Orleans? Well we’re trying……
About a year ago we came up with the idea of “Homeless Marketing”. You hand a sign with your message on it to a bunch of homeless people. Tell them that you’ll be looking for them at the end of the day and if you find them and they are still showing people the sign we would give them 50 bucks….
It’s a great plan but at 50 bucks a pop we could end up homeless pretty quick…… Not to mention that I’m pretty sure someone would begin to complain that it’s not politically correct to exploit homeless people for profit…..
BUT WAIT!
We have a friend that’s an actor in LA. He specializes in playing a homeless person on TV and in movies. He would be great! BUT there’s the little problem of getting him from LA to New Orleans.
But then…. how does one get people to pay attention to homeless people. In many areas they’ve kind of become an invisible nation of people….. hmmmmmmmmm…..
So, we began to look around where we live for inspiration. Lots of dirt, a few rocks, plenty of trees and wide open hay meadows full of weeds………
Hey, wait a minute, what was that last thing……
WEEDS!…… wonder how much attention one would get if he was standing on a street corner with a sign that said FREE WEEDS! (think anyone would notice the S?)
Yeah, we’re working pretty hard to get noticed in a town that thrives on being outrageous and different while trying to market to a small group of industry professionals that are inundated by TONS of strategic outrageous and different marketing plans.
Yeah, it’s tough being a musician. We’ll let you know how the plan works out.
Got Ideas? If so we would LOVE to hear from you…….