vacation over... Frog Time Again!

First, a nod to two very well run events of much different scales, events which make me appreciate the way humanity comes together and organizes itself for our own enjoyment... What makes us slightly more fun to hang out with than monkeys!

I had the opportunity to bring my own band, creatively titled "The Trevor Jones Band" for lack of more time to think of a cool band name, to The Realm Festival: Campout for the Cause II located in Rancho del Rio Colorado. As you might be able to discern from the name of the venue, a perfectly paced river flows through a picturesque valley where a stage is trucked in for festivals every summer. Now, I play lots of gigs and have to make up fun for myself to keep from getting burned out. For this particular set, I shaved my head with a razor and painted myself and the rest of the band with tribal markings. Fun times for one in the afternoon and the band killed it, consisting of Mark Levy (Frogs Gone Fishin') on drums, the uber-funky Cristian Basso (Little Hercules) on bass, KT Homes (Boxcar Daisies) on acoustic guitar, the world-class Tony G on keys and DJ Also Starring. I think we achieved my goal of deviating from the norm when post-fest, an acquaintance mentioned we "really freaked him out" in his altered state.

On a much larger scale, the World Cup provided endless distraction and procrastination justification for the last month. When I should be songwriting or update myspace or something, I find myself engrossed, rooting for teams I should never care about like Cote D'Ivoire or Spain, and getting truly upset when the USA lost to Ghana. I think Americans of my age were taught that our hegemony in the world was gonna last and not that the Netherlands are going to be a world superpower any time soon (again), but not getting first is just about as cool as getting last as far as sports fans in the Red, White and Blue section are concerned. Still, the political implications which spread far beyond the tournament, especially in a country like South Africa, make the World Cup arguably more important than the Olympics, given that people need and crave football like a Catholic priest at Boy Scout Camp.

Now that my blog just showed up on the Vatican's Google Alerts, I'm gonna change IP addresses. I don't stay in one spot very long these days. A typical week for a Frog involves rehearsals, solo gigs, duo gigs, teaching lessons and lots of commuting. I play music every night during the week and weekend, AKA never a night off. Not including solo, duo and side project shows, Frogs have played 350 shows in 25 cities around the country. Add those other shows in, and you realize we play music for an audience just about every day. Can anyone say booking agent?

Our responsibilities in Frogs, endlessly nebulous but direly important, were discussed at a record label meeting up at Mountain Size Records last week. Our label, consisting of lawyer, producer and now a full-time intern, have a great manner of making work fun and are not afraid to let us take the lead, or push us when necessary. They are heavily interested, and invested, in making Frogs Gone Fishin' all we can be as a Frog Army. Fish have schools, birds have flocks, we have an army. Simple.

Frogs have been entered into a voting contest for the yearly Yarmony Grass Fest and would love your vote. VOTE HERE If we win, we float down the river on a giant raft, playing music!

Actual Natural continues to sell around the country on iTunes, Amazon, and soon Rhapsody, although we are starting a promotion soon at Mountain Size which will put a t-shirt and other schwag in your hands for free when you buy the album.

Things are busy and the temperature down in Denver reached 101 degrees yesterday as I played the afternoon set at the Farmer's Market. It could be the one moment in which I don't intensely miss New Orleans, although after going out in Denver last night, cherishing a Saturday off, I realized we have to move here next for a number of reasons, musical and social alike.

The rest of the summer will be spent playing all over the state, including the THC fest in Alma (VERY HIGH at 10,000 ft) and a fest of our own, FROG FEST at Finnigan's Wake in Avon. September will see a tour to the West Coast and I'll head out to NYC again in October to record and play some shows.


This nationwide traveling in just a few months time is comforting in a way, like our influence is expanding in the right direction, the global direction.

Play it Out IV/V

Lay it Out, So You Can Play it Out
pts. 4 and 5, Rehearsal and Marketing

After reading parts 1 through 3 and using the information therein to book and play your first show, you're now officially a professional gigging musician. What to do now? How to fill your days now that you've found your passion?

There are two good answers to these questions: rehearsal and marketing. If you concentrate on these two aspects of your career you will constantly a) get more and different people to come to your shows and b) make sure they come back the next time because you've effectively lowered the chances you'll botch a performance and look like the musical village idiot.

Marketing (to me, not some college prof.) means two things. One, street level marketing which includes print, radio, posters, handbills, newspapers, magazines and generally talking to the average dude or lady about what it is you do and why they should come to your show. Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. Second, online promotion which should equal or exceed your level of street promo. A third category which is technically not marketing but really just exposure, involves PR situations such as TV interviews or CD album reviews.

Your online presence is particularly important. iTunes, CDbaby, Amazon, AOL, Pandora, Reverbnation, Virb, blogs, music industry websites.... all these and more should be able to access and publish information about your group, whether or not they actively solicit the information themselves. In other words, if a site has a submission page, fill it out! Pretty soon you will realize that most websites get their info from other websites, and your presence online will grow exponentially.

In terms of street-promo, just use common sense. Make sure your posters are readable from a distance, use color, go above and beyond the clip-art that comes with your word-processing software, and put up two dozen more posters than you think you need to put up.

Overall make sure your presence is properly "branded". All marketing materials should look uniform, so people can recognize your brand with one glance at a webpage or poster.

Do all this, avoid booking shows on nights with competing events, and the people will come. Now all you need to do is practice.

Most musicians have no idea how much rehearsal time really goes in to making songs perfect and executing them perfectly, even songs with heavy improvisation. World-class orchestras (and many bands) get to that status because there is a task-master-type conductor or band-leader cracking the whip every practice. I've had drumsticks thrown at me for missing notes in practice by big, scary band-leaders in New Orleans who have no tolerance for mistakes.

I prefer a more open type of rehearsal where everyone is free to positively critisize each other and the result is not only better because it is the sum of many ideas, but because everyone can be happy and feel invested in the project. The main idea is to get specific. If it sounds like someone is messing something up, go back, figure out what is happening. Correct it and move on.

I really do welcome any questions from musicians about how we at Frogs Gone Fishin' are able to support ourselves as a yound band (in a bad economy).

Next post, The Big Move.

Good Press

Frogs Gone Fishin' received some nice press this weekend by the good people at The Steamboat Pilot. You can read the article and interview HERE.

We really appreciate when interviewers make us sound more intelligent than we really are and don't attempt to blow us up as "the next big thing", but rather report about how hard we work and tour!

Back at Home

The band has settled down and will take respite from tour life for the next three months until making a long anticipated move to New Orleans. Until then FGF will play shows around Colorado most every weekend, building a fan base and capital to pay rent at our sublet in North Denver which has turned out to be a perfect fit, replete with kitchen, office, rehearsal space, living room for watching Broncos wins, and an extra bedroom for hosting company.

Needless to say, band life is pretty cushy as compared to our frenetic two-month fall tour. We even had this thing called the "internet" hooked up yesterday.

Just because we've found some regularity and even fruit and vegetables in our daily lives these days, doesn't mean we don't face challenges at our job constantly. Although we've worked hard enough to build a local gig schedule that will support costs like living in a house, such an intensive schedule can have its downsides. So many gigs cause a band to walk to the fine line between exposure and over-saturation in a given market. This phenomena really comes down to supply and demand economics.

The "demand" for a given musical act in a geographic region is static at any time. As soon as the supply of live shows by this artist surpasses the demand, attendance at shows will drop.

Most successful bands I've had experience with know this rule. They will play only once every four months to once every couple years in a market depending on their overall popularity, size of the market and size of venues available. This packs out the shows they do play, giving the appearance that the artist would be a sell out every time!

This may seem a sterile, non-artistic way to look at growing a fan base. But realizing the economics of the situation can help a band realize they need to make every show special from the minute it is booked, through promotion to the last note and final curtain.

And I don't mean special to the musicians on-stage. Some bands (Phish, The Allman Bros.) have seemingly defied these laws of music market economics and are capable of holding weekend-long festivals with no support acts, or 15-night runs at theaters, all because they forge a unique experience out of every show. This requires much forethought, rehearsal and many, many songs in the band's catalog. Not to mention musicianship that is as broad as it is deep.

It is this breadth and depth of material which our substanial gig schedule does allow for. We get to hone our skills in many different genres and styles, even if we are playing for ourselves sometimes...

We do get the opportunity to make some shows special in their own way. We took the stage minutes after Barack Obama made history on Nov. 4, playing to an ecstatic crowd at the Fox Theater in Boulder who had four years of optimism on their minds. For our scheduled NYE show in Denver at The Wash Park Grille, we plan on playing the psychedelic soundtrack to a late 90's cult film classic, corresponding costumes and all.

The bottom line is that we are a very young band and it would be impossible at this point to prize quality of production and promotion over quantity of gigs necessary to support ourselves.

A quote by someone who should be an inspiration to everyone in the music industry can help sum up what I mean:

"Now... what ya'll wanna do?
Wanna be Ballers? Shot-callers?
Brawlers -- who be dippin in the benz wit the spoilers
On the low from the jake in the taurus
Tryin to get my hands on some grants like horace
Yeah livin the raw deal, three course meals
Spaghetti, fettucini, and veal
But still, everything's real in the field.."

-Puff Daddy, "It's All About the Benjamins"