A Playlist To Get Me Through My Rust-belt Tour

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Aug 022010
 

I’m heading to Ohio. I’m going to be tearing down I-80 with my wife and son while I give the Highway Patrol the stink-eye. Before I get to Ohio we’re stopping in Pittsburgh. I haven’t been to Pittsburgh in ages and I’m looking forward to it. Then it’s off to Cleveland. I’m going to these places to play my music in bars and coffeehouses, and I’m calling it a tour. It’s my Rust-belt Tour 2010! T-shirts anyone?

So I need traveling music. Not just anything from the stick innards of the hard drive – this tour has a theme: Travel and Summer. So I picked out 75 Songs (iTunes only took 64 because they all weren’t available through Apple… see below for the full 75) that I felt are great to travel to and that remind me of summer in some way or another. 75 songs is about 5-1/2 hours of music and should get me from Sandy Hook to Pittsburgh.

A lot of these songs have a sentimental connection to when I was a kid and spent all night outside running around with friends listening to Zeppelin and Springsteen and not caring about anything. Then there are songs that remind me of summers since I’ve been married and sharing the songs with my wife. Also, I included some of my own tunes that I wrote with summer references injected on purpose. So I’ll load up my iPod and set it to shuffle and off we go!

You can get this playlist for yourself by clicking on the picture or here.

Cheers – See you in Pittsburgh at Howlers Coyote Cafe on Aug 12th at 9PM or in
Cleveland at Seekers Coffeehouse on Aug. 14th at 8PM

MSi9W – Week 2.1 ~ my 15 second pitch… strike one!

 Music Success in 9 Weeks  2 Responses »
Jul 152010
 

When you’re trying to figure out who you sound like don’t ask yourself. Don’t rely on your own ear which is being filtered through your ego and your cranial bones. Ask your fans, your audience your wife your brother and even the guy who really dislikes your music. Ultimately it’s the people to whom you are playing that are the judges of what your music and voice remind them of and how they can make the connection. And it’s all about the connection.

At the beginning of the year I asked my mailing list, posted a question on Face Book and even emailed a few close friends to ask them who they thought I sounded like and who my songs reminded them of. Here’s the list I got:

Johnny Cash
Bruce Springsteen
Greg Brown
Steve Earle
John Mellencamp – (one I had never considered, but intrigued me)
Tom Petty (?!?)
Tom Waits (hmm…)
Fred Eaglesmith
The Jayhawks (sound-wise)
John Hiatt

Some of these choices I was aware of and some not so (like the Mellencamp suggestion). This list has come in handy not only in crafting my pitch, but also in the way I interact with my audience and how I use social media. When I play a in new area I will search Twitter for people who are listening to these artists and follow them. I’ve gotten a few (not a lot) people to come to gigs based on this information.

As for the pitch. I figured that my sound is an amalgam of these artists and there are some things they do that I do as well and you can “taste” that in my songs. So I thought about taste and recipe and cooking and I came up with this:

Take a little Mellencamp
Flavor with Springsteen and Earle
Throw in some Cash and a pinch of Hiatt
Cook it up over a hot flame
Sounds like Darryl Gregory
Tasty!

I like it and it’s catchy. I can say it to someone who asks what I sound like and I get a laugh and the beginning of a conversation. But as I was working on the second week of Ariel’s book I decided that I also needed something a bit more to the point and a bit more hook-y. My music leans towards the alt.country side of the dial and when I play with a full band it can be quite swampy. Yet… I have a bunch of songs that are just plain sweet. So I came up with this tag line:

Darryl Gregory
Hard edged country with a soft heart

So Ariel suggests that we commit to the pitch. We should put it on newsletters, Face Book, Twitter, press releases, in fact everything we create that comes in contact with a possible listener (check out the updated header on this blog). This is something that I will put into action and in fact this has inspired me to create a new business card. I already had one for my studio (Blue Cave Studios) but not one for me as a performer. I went to VistaPrint.com and put one together. Here it is:

I like being referred to as a raconteur – a story teller. I didn’t order a lot of these cards, so let me know what you think and if there are any tweaks you would suggest.

~Darryl

MSi9W Week 1.2

 Music Success in 9 Weeks  4 Responses »
Jul 082010
 

Goals.

Goals are difficult to write down because they are a kind of commitment and being a Libra I find it hard to and on a choice. Goals also make you get off the fence about things. When ever my Father encountered people who were having a tough time making a decision (me, my sister both Libras and my Mom, an Aries) he’d shout “Piss or get off the pot…” He was a Sagittarius.

I always thought that was hilarious when I was a kid – Dad said piss – ha. Past the bathroom humor and silliness, I get it now. Make a decision. Make a commitment. Decisions and commitments are malleable.

What do YOU want?
Why do you want it?
How are you going to get it? What are the steps?

So here are my goals for the short terms and the long term. I’m sure the long term goals will be tweaked as this 9 weeks progresses.

I have also posted pictures of the decorations my son put on my goal pages with his oil pastels.

Peace

Darryl

GOALS

2 Month Goals

  • 25 new people on my email list by 9/5/10
  • 1 print or radio interview by 9/5/10
  • 3 new songs written by 9/5/10
  • 5 songs demo-ed by 9/5/10
  • Book 4 gigs in 4 states by 9/5/10
  • purchase a new PA by 9/5/10

12 Month Goals

  • Open for a larger act by 7/5/11
  • Record and release a new CD by 7/5/11
  • Grow my mailing list to 500 by 7/5/11
  • Play a gig that earns $500 by 7/5/11
  • Book a 2-week summer tour by 7/5/11
  • Gig with a duet or band by 7/5/11

Music Career Goals
7-5-10 to  7-5-20

  • Support myself and my family with my music and my studio by 7-5-20
  • Have 1000 true fans on my list by 7-5-20
  • Have an established house concert tour that brings in $20,000 a year by 7-5-20
  • Speak and teach at 2 music conferences a yearby 7-5-20
  • Produce 2 artists a year by 7-5-20
  • Have Lucinda Williams or Rosanne Cash cover one of my songs by 7-5-20

12 month Money Goals
7-5-10 to 7-5-11

  • Have a ZERO balance on my Capital One credit card by 7-5-11
  • Earn more than I spend on the studio and gigs – a positive cash flow by 7-5-11
  • Have a cash reserve created by my gigging and studio of $5,000 for summer expenses (teachers do not get paid during the summer…) by 7-5-11

Lifetime Intentions and Goals

  • I intend to live my life creating art and teaching others about art (music)
  • I intend to be awake and aware moment by moment
  • I intend to love my family, friends, and fellow humans
  • I intend to lead a healthy life
  • I intend to follow the 8 fold path
  • I intend to be happy with what I have

MSi9W – Week 1.1

 Music Success in 9 Weeks  1 Response »
Jul 062010
 

I thought I would do a quick post on where I am on Tuesday of the first week of this blogging challenge. So here it goes…

I must confess that I’ve started a lot of these marketing/business concepts before only to get discouraged and then allow them to drop by the wayside. I’m looking to use this challenge as a way to be held accountable by my peers and by a person who has had success with marketing (Ariel). I think that I read in a Stephen Covey book that it usually takes 3 weeks for a new habit to form (and in the process break old/nasty habits). The catch is the ability to stick to it and make the action a habit.

I’m aware of a lot of the names in the entrepreneurial self-help business: Pam Slim, Stephen Covey, John Jantsch, Ali Brown, Bob Baker. Often, awareness breeds contempt and a kind of resentment at the fact that these people are making money off of me for something that should be free. It feels like a Ponzi scheme at times: I tweet a little, grow a FaceBook page, grow a list and then I tell everybody else what to do and make money off of it. That’s the contempt and the cynicism. The reality is this: HARD WORK AND CONSISTENCY. Hard work – nothing in business is easy; Consistency – doing it again and again like practicing scales and modes and rhythms. If you happened to read Derek Sivers’s blog post last week you read that success is about doing something, failing and then getting right back up and doing it again with the knowledge you gained from getting your teeth knocked out the first time. This is where I am: I do something, get punched in the gut, but then I don’t get back up and figure out the best way to punch back. Well let’s put a change to that, eh?

So I sat down last night and read the first chapter of MSi9W. I made some notes and sketched out some short term and long term goals that I will tweak today. I dusted off my success journal which I kept for a time and then let go of and placed it by my bed and will write in it tonight.I am also going to start up my ‘Gratitude List’ which I send out to a lit of a few people who I know really care about my well-being.

I’m getting up
I’m bloody
I’m throwing a left jab, but it’s a feint ’cause here comes my right

~ Darryl

Connection and Resonance

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May 092010
 

Someone asked me recently whether I have ever cried because of a musical performance. I said yes and on two occasions. The second time was at a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. I went with a friend from grad school and we sat way up in the nose bleed section with the other poor students, but Severance Hall has great acoustics and those seats are actually very good for listening.

Mahler’s 2nd is a long piece and involves lots of musicians and a full chorus plus soloists: a real circus. But it’s an amazing journey that we go on and the finale is… Well I still remember feeling numb for hours afterward and not being able to speak all the way home. And yes, I cried. Not boo-hoo, but tears of connection and resonance with a piece of music and a composer and the audience. The music was the catalyst that set all of those disparate things in motion together and I felt it keenly and on a deep emotional level.

The first time I cried because of a musical performance was when I was on stage playing. It was during a performance of the Holst Suite in E Flat, Op. 28, No. 1. Not familiar with it? Then you’ve probably never played in a wind ensemble because it is a requisite piece of music for all bands of a certain caliber. But I’m sure you know Gustav Holst’s suite entitled The Planets, you know Mars, anyway… I hope…

I was a euphonium and trombone major in college and this piece of music calls for the tuba and euphonium (which is often referred to as a tenor tuba) to play a strikingly beautiful melody in octaves in the opening. The theme is then passed on to the trumpets, etc.

On this occasion we had a guest conductor H. Robert Reynolds who began the piece with out a downbeat. o indication of a beginning from the conductor? Wha? But he just looked at me and the tuba player, smiled and we started – perfectly. It was beyond real. It was beyond magic. It was very spiritual. I don’t quite remember how I continued to play because I felt like I was disappearing into the sound and after the performance I couldn’t speak and was crying. My fellow low brass friends all thought I was nuts, but there was something in the emotion and connection to the sound, the conductor and the moment that was… beyond words. Just as with the Mahler it was about the connection and the resonance with the music as the thing that bound it all together.

So, I recently put the Holst Suites on my iPod and have been listening and trying to remember that Spring concert of 1985. The music is there, but the perfect storm is not present to make me feel the same as I did that day and that time. Perhaps it is why I keep at it, music that is, to experience that feeling again with the audience, the connections, the resonance and the sound.

At a gig I just played in NYC a person in the audience came up to me after and told me that one of my songs made her cry. What is it about this music thing? The connection. The resonance. Very powerful stuff. Very powerful indeed.

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