Winter Update

Singing some songwriting in Nashville.

Apologies for neglecting the blogosphere for the past month! Life in Colorado has been so busy, yet strangely comfortable, that maybe I haven't felt the need to relate the woes of tour life to the public. I wanted to highlight some things that Frogs Gone Fishin', For/Sure Productions and myself will be up to in the coming months, so I can get back to more esoteric musings about that crazy thing called the music business.

I've been in Nashville since Monday; Portwood (guitar, FGF) and I had a hellish time spending 12 hours in the Tourmobile trying to make it back to Denver after a two-day mountain run, followed by a 6am flight to Tennessee for an acoustic gig at the venerable 3rd and Lindsley.

After all the smack I've talked about this town in previous posts, you are probably wondering why I would forgo three precious days (out of only two months) in Colorado to head back out on the road (to Cashville of all places...). We do have some very good friends here. But, the real answer lies in an ongoing strategy to try and promote our music in every way possible, outside of the two or three shows a week FGF plays. Portwood and I played acoustic versions of around 15 Frogs songs on Monday night and closed for a well know band, popular in the 90's, called Blessid Union of Souls. You will certainly remember hearing this song from pop radio, circa 1996. The Blessid guys seemed in good spirits, despite a notable decline in their popularity since the 90's: a good example of the absurdity of radio and record label inflation in the 80's/90's.

Promoting our music also means doing interviews and making sure our album is available to the public in as many ways as possible, a task mostly undertaken by Oh/Ya Records.

In the promotion company realm, For/Sure Productions is very busy contracting bands and artwork for Mountainside Mardi Gras which will be officially announced sometime in January or February next year. I'm learning a lot about artwork and design by interacting with our artists at Right On studios in New York. They are doing a lot to aid me with my visually based inadequacies.

In my personal pursuit of writing more (the recent lack of blog postings excepted), I've applied to write about the CO music scene at a hip publication based in Denver. I'd love to expand my writing scope in this way. Blogging is great and a great way to let your community know what is happening in your life and work. Assignments coming down from an editor at a magazine would be a different challenge altogether and probably limit some of the more jaded opinions I have about the industry from coming out. I would be focusing on bands and their music instead, which is really all that should matter to me from an artistic perspective.

I use that perspective to keep perspective on my life as a musician, promoter and (hopefully) writer. Or as Kenny Rogers put it:

"I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In"

Next post, an interview with Ivan Neville of Dumpstaphunk.