The Unsigned Mind….. New Orleans or “Escaping the Artistic Desert”….

If you’ve been keeping up then you know we had a couple of really important shows recently. I’m not implying that all our shows aren’t important. These shows just had potential for being really huge for us.

 And in a lot of ways they were.

We had the honor of playing in a club that had been a Jazz and Blues club in downtown New Orleans since the 1890’s. The Ramp Room of The Little Gem Saloon is everything you might imagine of a place with such a heritage. Well lit corner stage surrounded by Red and Black seating and carpet with a hardwood bar. It was the perfect ambiance in a place with such a heritage…

But it wasn’t the room that really stood out. It was the performers…. they were awesome and there we were right in their midst. Treated as equals and receving the same accolades from those in attendance as the other artist that crossed the stage.

The next day we attended several seminars on the music business. Aspects of which we barely even knew existed and other aspects we had no clue about how to access….. it was a very eye opening experience. The panelist then spent time visiting with all the different musicians in the room and answering their questions about the music business and how to handle up and coming careers…… and there we were right in their midst. Treated as equals. Some of these panelist even expressing an interest in hearing from us in the days and weeks after the conference….. it was awesome….

Then onto another show at another club. This time in the French Quarter of New Orleans. There were other artist, people from a record company or two and all the scurry and excitement of playing music in such a historical place. You could hear other bands in other clubs up and down the street. Fans of all kinds walking by the doors and stopping to listen or coming in and sitting down to enjoy what ever artist was on stage at that moment…. and their we were right in the midst of the whole experience. Laughing and getting to know other musicians. Talking with people from a record company. Taking in the whole experience and being treated just like the rest of the musicians there….. it was an incredible experience.

We made new friends, some that we’ve already been in contact since the conference. There were other highlights too……

Our first day there as we were going into where the conference was held a man looked up so see us entering and hollered out “HEY, Captain Ledge Band!”…. it was the gentleman in charge of the entire event and he knew who we were! Now, that’s was a different kind of feeling. Eric introduced himself and walked us into the building, introducing us to his “people” and getting us checked in and registered. He event came to our second show and spent about an hour talking with us at the end of the night. Pretty big deal when you consider there were about 130 other bands playing over the 3 days and he chose to come talk to us……. there’s more to tell about how all that transpired but that’s another day for another post…..

And then it was over and we went back to our rooms to sleep a little before the long trip home…..

Honestly, it caused me some sadness……

We joked with people at the conference that our normal audience is the coyotes around the place where we live. We made the decision a long time ago to not be a bar band and instead concentrate on writing and recording. We’re honored to play most of the festivals in our area but those don’t happen on a regular basis so we just play and write music for our enjoyment most of the time.

This has had some positive results for us. We got invited to play in New Orleans for instance. We’ve had a video broadcast nationally on ZUUS TV. Our music and our band have shown up in various charts and rankings on sites on the internet. All good stuff but not near as satisfying as getting to play for someone other than coyotes.

But there’s another thing that we didn’t realize we don’t have until this experience. Something that we couldn’t possibly miss if we never knew we needed it……

The opportunity to hang out and communicate with like minded musical artist. Yeah, we don’t get much interaction out of those coyotes. We don’t get to sit around and talk music with industry professionals and we don’t get to spend as much time as we would like interacting with music fans and the techs that make those shows possible.

And in the process that was New Orleans and The Cutting Edge Music Conference and Festival it made me realize that is the thing that I thrive on the most.

So, we loaded up and headed back to the artistic desert. Yes, we have great friends here. Our family is here and our jobs BUT what isn’t here is that interaction with “music folks like us” and now we discover that this is one thing that is missing in our lives and we need very badly.

That, and more opportunities to share all that music with people that are music fans….

We thank each and everyone of you that take time out of their day to follow The Captain Ledge Band. We thank Web Greg and Tomy McDonald for being in our court and helping us to try and make all this possible. We need each and every one of you and New Orleans let us know just exactly how badly we need you……

 

 

The Unsigned Mind……. Busy as Bees….

If you follow Cliff’s personal page you would know there’s a new batch of critters around our house. Not to be confused with the normal parade of animals that pass our window. There are the hummingbirds that flock to the feeders on the front porch in the morning. They create such a stir you would think it was Black Friday at Wal~Mart. There are our dogs…. they don’t exactly pass by the window that often. Mostly they sleep…. and eat…. then they wander out into the fields to do what dogs do after they eat. Then more sleeping, more eating, more wandering. Rinse and repeat….

Cows…. lots of cows…. we see them more in the winter when they come up to be fed but we see them a lot….

Coyotes….. well, we don’t actually see the coyotes. We hear them… A LOT…. especially just before dark. Apparently we live at the crossroads of the coyote party line. When one of them howls they ALL howl…..

and cats…. we’ve got a bumper crop of farm cats too…… all I know is there must be upwards of a thousand of them based on how much food we put out…

sorry, got lost in all that just now….

We have BEES. A whole hive of them and they’re not just interesting, they are busy. I know this because I’ve stood next to the entrance to the hive and watched them come and go. A Bee is a very busy critter. Twice a week I open the hive up and feed them. (2 cups water, one cup sugar) This is when I really notice how busy they are. The feeders go into the holes that are shown in the picture and the bees all seem to be really fond of these holes. They certainly get busy when I pull the jars out to refill them. It was during a recent feeding while I was watching all the milling around that it struck me. The comparison between those bees and our musical family, The Captain Ledge Band.

School has just started and mornings are once again busy. Jeana, Tristan and Baylee all leave at the same time. Me, I’m the lucky one. I get to sit in the quiet and finish my coffee. Recently I’ve been condemened to decalf so it’s not as fun as regular coffee but this is MY morning routine and I’m sticking to it no matter what.

At least I will until the Admiral tells me otherwise. (I may be Captain Ledge but Jeana is the Admiral and has the final say on all things important.) I only am allowed to make decisions when the possibility of something bad happening is involved. I could be wrong but I have some suspicions about this whole authority thing.

I know….. my mind is wandering and there’s a point to all of this somewhere.

So, I’m watching these bees all crawling around and flying and doing all the normal stuff bees do when it occurred to me. Our life is not so different than the bees. I’m not going to get in trouble by stating that the whole purpose to my life is to keep the queen happy… or Admiral or….. yeah, that.

The youngest member of the crew, she’s 7, will get home and do homework, go outside and play, come back inside, go back outside, come back inside, eat, eat some more, take a bath and go to bed exhausted. I’m pretty sure there’s the same sort of pattern at school.

Tristan, percussionist extradornaire and full time teenager, wallers out of bed, groans about school, primps for …. well, as long as it takes, goes back in his room to lay down taking the time to breathe between bites of what ever (seriously, he’s reached the age where he doesn’t really seem to care what food is aimed at his mouth as long as it’s food. I don’t even think he takes time to chew it long enough to taste it and I’ve often wondred why we don’t just put everything in a blender and feed him with a funnel. LOT more efficient that way and less dishes)…. yeah, off topic again. He then is aimed at school where I’m pretty sure he goes “off” all day, probably into the preverbial lala land, comes home, complains about school between shoveling bites of food into his mouth, does homework. Rest before bedtime cause he’s worn out from all that eating. Eats dinner, then more resting then a bedtime snack. In the midst of all this there’s constant texting and complaining about how dull and boring school is. THEN we somehow manage to interrupt his busy schedule with a nightly practice with The Captain Ledge Band. Yeah, it’s that busy…

Jeana, aka MOM, aka The Admiral, gets up an hour before everyone else so she can have some quiet time. Some mornings I think she just sits there waiting for the coyotes to howl. She has coffee, does some reading then simultaneously is able to get both her self and the 7 year old ready for school. Drives into work, tolerates all sorts of “stuff” in her office, comes home, cooks, laundry (which is a NEVER ending thing in our house), overseas the completion of all the aforementioned homework then does the band practice thing followed by a few minutes of time with the Captain in which we both set there and stare off into space like brain damaged zombies. Sleep and repeat.

As the Captain of this zoo I manage to observe this whole circus of the brain dead, go to work, get home, take care of all the assigments from the Admiral, PRACTICE followed by the aforementioned “Zombie” period then off to bed and repeat.

As I was feeding the bees today I began to wonder what the bees would think of our routine? I know there are normal families out there that don’t have a band practice every night. I’m betting there’s some other sort of “activity” they participate in and I’m betting they might just be as tired as we are when they finally crawl into their repective overnight hibernation zones. At least I really hope that someone else has as hectic a schedule as we do.

This week us bees are even busier! Yeah, hard to believe…..

On top of everything else we did a show on Saturday and now have two more days of practice before we pack mule it off to New Orleans. I’m not sure just what we’re thinking though. If we have a successful trip we’re going to become even busier and we’ll start looking more and more like those bees.

Yeah, didn’t think that one through before we “jumped” at the opportunity did we? Lol……

But, being busy as bees is a good thing. The alternative is to sit around and do nothing and I’m just not a big fan of that. In fact, if I were to sit around doing nothing I would end up feeling rested and we can’t have that happen can we.

So, I’ll keep feeding those bees. Practicing music with The Captain Ledge Band on a nightly basis and coming soon, we’ll begin recording the next album. It’s kind of our form of the honey those bees work so hard at. Only, our honey is music and just like the bees, it’s pretty sweet stuff when shared with friends!

By the time you read this we may be back from New Orleans at which point one of two things will be happening. Our lives will be different or they will be the same. Unlike the bees though we’ll have all that experience to share on our website.

We’ll be taking lots of pics in New Orleans and posting them online. There’s a feed from Flikr at the bottom of the main page of the site where you can catch glimpses as we run past the camera doing our very best bee imitation.

The Unsigned Mind….. what you don’t know can’t hurt you…

Whew….

it’s been an amazing couple of weeks on every level. Work, Music, personal… just amazing. BUT, you have to take the good with the bad and there have been some bad things come this way also.

The good……

I have incredible people that I work with in an office environment and we tend to stay very busy. The people I work with have demonstrated so much kindness and willingness to help that just saying thank you will never be enough.

There is our Web Developer/art department/social media guru. Greg (or Web Greg since he and our guitar player share the same name) has been amazing in keeping up with everyting that is involved with promoting The Captain Ledge Band. I’ve never met him in person but we’ve accumulated hours and hours of time on the phone. I truly look forward to actually being able to shake his hand and today we count him as one of our good friends.

We now, thanks to another good friend, have a bee hive at our house. Well, it’s not IN the house but it sits about 100 yards in front of our house. We’re very aware of the health benefits of local honey in our home and to be looking at a hive that represents hope for those benefits is something else we just can’t say thank you for enough.

Musically we’ve passed a few milestones. We’re being asked to book a few gigs here and there. We were invited to be a guest at a radio station. It turned into being guest at TWO different stations. We were asked to perform a second show in New Orleans. LOTS of awesome and exciting stuff is beginning to happen.

And the list goes on and on…… Yes, it’s an incredible blessing to our band, our family and our lives.

But life isn’t all a bed of roses and there have been some bad things that can really take the wind out of the sails….

I wish I didn’t pay attention to or care so much about peoples perception of the things we’re involved in. It’s almost as if there are people that just don’t care how their words or actions affect us or those around us. It can be a tremendously depressing thing when people you trust turn on you in ways you never imagine possible.

And so the title to this post. What you don’t know can’t hurt you……

If we didn’t pay attention to these things or didn’t know about them then it wouldn’t be so depressing. Depression…. that little thing that caused one of the great comedians of this generation to feel so desperate and hopeless that he took his own life. If I didn’t know about what happened and didn’t have some understanding of those feelings it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

We know, for instance, where our support for our music comes from. We know where most of the people that listen to us are AND we know, thanks to social media, those that mention us in their post and where the people live that “Like” our page.

It’s not coming from those that we would be most hopeful that they would take notice how hard we try.

If we didn’t know these things then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Yes, there are some around us that are VERY supportive and we truly have a very deep appreciation for each and every one of them. Then there are those that have tacky, rude or snide remarks to make. It’s almost as if they hate that good things happen for us.

If we didn’t know these things then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Maybe we’re just sensitive to our envioronment. Maybe in our effort to put emtions into word and song we’ve become overly sensitive to our surroundings and the people that we would hope might express some minor acknowledgment of these things are not comfortable expressing anything positive to us. Maybe……

Maybe if we didn’t notice these things then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

In fact… there are lots of things we notice that cause us pain. I’m sure that everyone that reads this has this experience. I hate seeing pictures of women that have been beat up by some jerk. It disgust me to see pictures or starving children then drive past a large church all landscaped with stained glass windows and large concrete parking lots with “No Skateboarding” sings. It makes me wonder how much good could have been done or how many of those starving kids could have had a meal with the money spent on all that.

Maybe if I didn’t know these things then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

I know we can’t save the world. Heck, I can barely keep up with saving or protecting our little corner of it but I can guarantee you it’s not from lack of want to or lack of trying.

Maybe, if I didn’t know how much I cared it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

So, we get up every morning and continue our walk down the road that is life. We experience the good and the bad. The joys and the sorrows. We bury good friends and watch people that are determined to cause others harm continue to walk along committing their atrocities against those that are in their path.

We hear about terrorist beheading children, raping and killing their mothers and hanging their fathers after they force them to watch their families being tortured. It’s a terribly sad thing what one human is capable of doing to another.

Maybe, if I didn’t know about such things it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Well….. I think that for now I’ve gotten this off my chest. It was something bottled up inside me that I had to get out someway. I had to tell someone that I DO CARE…. and that I’m feeling a little helpless.

We have an amazing couple of weeks ahead of us. In fact, it could be life changing. At least that’s our hope! BUT, no matter what happens as we move forward it seems important that I say this to everyone that is reading.

We care. We care A LOT. If ever you need to know if someone cares PLEASE shoot us a message and just hang in there. There are a lot of people that care and we are just a few of them.

I apologize to those that were expecting humor or musical topics today. I know this isn’t what you expected. However, please consider taking the time to let someone know that you care today.

The Unsigned Mind……. empty!

It’s happened to all of us and seems to be happening to me more and more. It’s that really uncomfortable moment when your brain just seems to stop working and you can’t come up with the name of someone OR something that should be very easy to recall….

Yup….. nothing there, NADA…. a complete blank!

The good news is? Well, it happens to all of us. (NO getting older jokes)

but it happens to musicians and other people that are of the creative type more often than they would like to admit. Every kind of artist suffers this at some point. Sometimes it’s called writers block. Some artist write it off as just not feeling like being creative. Others come up with interesting ways to try and get some sort of creativity to come out of their minds and be transferred to their preferred medium, be it canvas, paper, recordings or some huge block of granite that you chip away at a little at a time.

Interestingly enough, the most creative times for me, and when I do some of my best stuff is just after I wake up in the morning. Another interesting and very annoying time is in the middle of the night. I don’t know if I dream this stuff and wake up with it on my mind or if being surrounded by the darkness shuts off the sensory input and forces the brain to entertain its self. It’s just annoying that I wake up in the middle of the night with lyrics, melodies or bass lines in my head. It’s also the most inconvenient time!

That leaves me with two options. Option one is to just forget about it and go back to sleep. While that’s the easiest way out it’s not the most artistically productive. Option two is get up, write it down or record it then try to go back to sleep. The penalty for following option two is a long and tired day at work with almost no productivity and a long series of really bad decisions brought on by exhaustion.

So…. the question is…. What’s a person to do?

After thinking about this for a really long time it has finally occurred to me. There’s not a good answer. I think the right description of the problem is that I’m stuck with an unanswerable paradox. I once heard Bart Simpson describe as paradox as “damned if you do, damned it you don’t”.

I’m certain he got one thing right…. it’s the life of the damned! …lol….There sure are a lot of people that have the desire to write a book but never do and that leads up to the empty part.

This isn’t something you can set aside time at “4 pm on Friday afternoon I’m going to sit down and create something”. I guarantee when 4 pm on Friday rolls around you’re going to have one thing and one thing only. A completely empty brain. The results will be NADA, NOTHING. You will stare at a wall with a completely blank look on your face. NOTHING will happen. It’s a guaranteed thing. In fact that empty brain thing will begin to make you feel like a village idiot at approximate 4:05pm….

HEY, there’s a new song title “5 minutes to stupid”. Wish I could drop what I’m doing and work on it….

Let’s not confuse this with the times that you have a strong desire to sit down and think about nothing. Well, nothing except maybe a cold beer or a margarita in your hand.

So, the next time you see someone walking around with that totally blank look on their face please be kind and hand them a sign. Prefereably one that says “Artist in Training”.

The Unsigned Mind…… the Plan!

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…….

The Unsigned Mind….. What’s it all mean?

I wasn’t sure if I should start or end this with an emotional outburst…. lol… AAARRRRGH!

I think that’s pirate speak for…. AAAARRRRRRGH! Lol…..

but seriously…. it’s complicated. I mean, the music business that continues to grow in the modern landscape. What’s making it complicated is the amount of information, and sometimes dis-information, that today’s artist is overwhelmed with.

There’s also trying to decide if you should even bother to pay attention to all this information. It’s not just information that comes in… it’s also all the outgoing information. Today’s music fan and the websites they frequent are totally content driven. The newest content appearing at the top of the page. Then we add in all these “cookies” and “algorithms” that give priority to all this content based on what these mathmatical critics determine to be the most relevant to the interest of the readers/viewers/listeners and it starts to get complicated.

But wait…. because it doesn’t end there…..

Statistics….. these little computer critics also do another interesting thing. They help other computer programs generate statistics. Stuff like, what got listened to. How many people read what. What kind of content attracts the most traffic. How many people saw the latest blog posting of “The Unsigned Mind….” yeah, stuff like that…. which begs….. is there anybody out there?…..

On one site we’ve had a song in the top 100 world wide for months. It even went as high as number 11 or something like that. So, what does that mean…..?

Well….. it means that a lot of people that visit that site listened to the song. And honestly, that’s about it. Well, that and we get bragging rights to the ranking. It hasn’t put not one single penny in our pockets though….

Over all we are overwhelmed by all this influx of statistical information. So much so that it would drive a person crazy. Not to mention the stress caused when you see a dip in the progress of all this statistical information. I mean, this crap can cause a serious anxiety attack….. if you’re interested in such things.

As for me….. HECK YEAH I’M INTERESTED!

I could founder on numbers every day. I live to wake up and check our Reverb Nation Ranking, The Number One Music Charts, how many views our most recent Facebook post had. How many new “Likes”, our Twitter followers….. It’s just an endless nightmare of information.

Then there’s all the “linking” this stuff together so all these algorithms and cookies and websites and Google and Yahoo and Ask Jeeves and such talk to each other…… It almost makes each post take on a life of its own. Then you review all the site statistics and numbers and graphs and charts to see what people like and what they don’t so you can change how you post things…..

Heck, some of this stuff even changes based on what time you post. For instance, did you know the average life expectancy of a facebook post is only 4 hours? Yeah, me neither…. heck, some days my coffee last longer than that…… well, except that recently I’ve been informed that my days of caffeine enjoyment are OVER!….

DANG IT MAN…….

But I guess that’s another post for another day…..

What it all boils down to is this. Musicians will do almost anything to try and get noticed. We’re an unsightly crew and we thrive on attention. Well, everyone except the beautiful lady that plays mandolin in The Captain Ledge Band……. BUT, it is just amazing all the information that the Unsigned Musician is overwhelmed with. There’s all the stuff above plus more…. for instance. For some reason the “Likes” on our facebook page skyrocketed from teenage girls in Istanbul, Turkey at one point. There were several thousand of them and it happened without explanation. You should have seen all the numbers coming in as it was happening. I got so excited that there was serious danger of soiling articles of clothing….

But ultimately it slowed down, then has begun to reverse its self. BUT it sure was exciting while it was going on. I believe that’s called an “Anomolay” in statistical terms…..

It’s also enough to make a musician even crazier…..

I’m going to finish this up with one little thought….

If you see a particular sailing musician walking around in a daze completely unaware of his surroundings….. well, be nice, he’s just trying to understand what all those numbers floating around inside his “Neurologically Poor” mind really mean…..