My Yearly Cycle

From Advent through Easter, I’m incredibly busy with church gigs and Mendelssohn Club rehearsals and concerts. After Easter, I’m on full summer vacation, until Labor Day. 

My life is ruled by the Liturgical Cycle.

My only responsibilities during vacation are appearing for my church Sabbath gigs. I’ve been through the repertoire for these gigs many, many times. The hymns are all transcribed into my composition program (MuseScore) and posted into my 12.9” iPad. Occasionally, a congregation member will suggest a new and useful hymn, but that’s becoming a rarity. 

Summer vacation runs for 18 weeks. 

This summer, I plan to start building a commercial and performing outlet for my popular music originals and cover songs. How? Where?

I’m thinking of subscribing to Grok, Elon Musk’s and X’s AI chat bot, for advice on how to create and develop commercial and performing outlets. In other words, business advice on how to effectively reach an audience. I think that an audience for my music and performing exists. Not a huge audience, but one sufficient to fill venues ranging from 100 to 500 seats in major cities and college and resort towns.

Grok is 8 bucks a month. 7 if you pay for an entire year in advance. Grok does not yet, store user sessions in memory. ChatGPT just announced that it will. Seems likely to me that Grok will soon follow suit.

What would be my first question to ask Grok? To be continued…

A Stolen Kiss

An 85 year old church lady in one of my congregations has quite a crush on me. In my first few weeks working for this church, she invited me out to breakfast and, effectively, propositioned me.

“You’re not too old to still have some fun,” she told me. “But, not with me. I’m too old.”

She sat there and waited for me to disagree, but I didn’t.

I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation to breakfast, but I hadn’t thought that 85 year old women might still be horny. Lesson learned. I weaseled my way out of the invitation without any damage, and I thought that was the end of it.

Eve (I’ll call her) has been texting me almost daily for a couple of years. At church, she demands a full body hug during the group meet and greet part of the service.

Last Sunday, Eve arrived early for services and, as usual, marched right up to the piano bench to greet me.

“Give me a hug,” she begged.

I haven’t considered this an unusual request, or one difficult to comply with, so I hugged her.

Eve started to try to kiss me, and much to my surprise landed a wet smooch right on my lips! I hadn’t expected that.

The taste and odor she left behind was unbearable. Dense makeup covering over an odor of intense bodily decay. I’m old, too, so I’m aware that the bodily disintegration of an old person is difficult to tolerate.

The residual taste and odor were so awful that I got up after I played for the opening hymn, and pretended to go to the bathroom to relieve myself. I washed my face and hands and rinsed out my mouth, and I was able to continue to play for the service.

Things have gotten out of hand. Churches are incredibly sensitive to allegations of sexual abuse or unwanted sexual advances by their employees. I cannot afford even the hint of romantic involvement with a church lady in one of my congregations. The churches are terrified of being bankrupted by lawsuits.

I’ll have to be on guard with Eve. That’s the last time she gets close enough to French kiss me. I can’t really complain to the church board or the pastor. That will only rebound against me.

The constant texting is something I probably can’t stop, but I can try to cool it off.

Dealing with the romantic aspirations of the church ladies is the most difficult part of my church musician job. The attention and compliments are appreciated, but if I don’t keep my distance I’ll be out of a job.

Am I Doomed to Job’s Fate?

I’ve been reading the Book of Job. Why? Half a dozen times in my life I’ve been right on the verge of achieving my full ambitions as a musician, and in each instance, some calamity blew everything up. God struck me down.

The worst and most catastrophic was Myrna’s death, just as we had become a powerful musical duo, just as the music business was opening up to us.

I’ve been trying for years to understand this dynamic. Unlike Job, I was not always a faithful servant of God (in fact I became a rebellious hell raiser), nor did I refrain from cursing God when all hell broke loose.

Like Job, however, I’ve always wondered what I have done to displease God, and why he does not relieve me of my suffering. I’m still trying to find my way through this dilemma. Myrna was equally confounded by this. She often said (forgive me for the sin of pride): “Everybody’s waiting for you to be a great man.”

The Old Testament God actually allowed Satan to destroy Job to test his faith. Would he renounce and curse God if his children and servants were slaughtered, his body destroyed with disease, his life reduced to beggary? Job persisted in worshipping God.

I failed that test of faith long ago.

Tomorrow, I’m headed into the recording studio with a band to put down the basic tracks to three original songs: “Granddaddy Ran Bootleg,” “I’m Going Home,” and “Show Me the Way,” and I’ll be recording what I regard as a Hank William’s hymn, “Lost Highway.”

The burden of my past collapses weighs heavily on me. Where to go with these recordings? Why should anybody listen to a nobody, an old man headed toward the grave?

I tell myself that I only want to document to the best of my ability my lifetime of work and struggle, but the old ambitions still live inside me.

You might be surprised to learn that I do expect these recordings to be noticed and to be well received critically. That’s happened repeatedly. And then… the fall.

Will God release me this time from the fate of Job?

A Journey to the Unknown

Why am I doing this? Why spend the money to record my original songs and hymns with a band? Who will listen?

I have no answers.

Perhaps I only want to create some document to prove that I was on this earth, and that I was a musician and writer. I certainly have no delusions that I will make back what I spend, or that I’ll make a profit.

My church work, and my work with The Mendelssohn Club, present none of these dilemmas. I get paid for playing for services. While I don’t get paid to perform with the club, I enjoy the rehearsals, the musical challenge and the thrilling performances before big audiences.

I’m certainly not trying to form an ongoing band with this recording project. Although my Methodist client has asked me to debut the work at their church, I doubt that will be economically feasible. I would have to pay the musicians involved to play. May be possible to afford to do that once.

My first, and only coherent, ambition is to hear my original songs and hymns fleshed out with a full band. What to do with the recordings once they are finished is a mystery.

I’ll try submitting a tune, “Granddaddy Ran Bootleg,” to Sirius Radio’s Outlaw Country channel. Been a long time since I was seriously involved in the popular music biz, but I’m assuming the game hasn’t changed. Power brokers in the biz won’t listen to anything unless it’s referred to them by one of their associates.

I’m nobody. That’s very unlikely to change. I no longer have any personal relationships with music biz insiders. 40 years ago, I did, but not now.

So, I’m embarking on a journey with no destination that I can envision. I’m neither pessimistic nor optimistic. From a practical standpoint, there is probably no sensible reason to do this.

But, I’m not betting the farm. Not spending myself into bankruptcy. I can afford to do this. There is definitely a hard limit to how much I can afford to spend.

Won’t be the first time in this life I’ve done something that was neither practical nor sensible.

Booking My Recording Session

Having assembled a band to record my original hymns and cover hymns, I now must book the studio and get 4 guys there are the same time. This is a frustrating struggle, one that I mostly abandoned decades years ago.

A lot of phone calls and texts. Since all the musicians are old men like me (except for the female backup singer who will be dubbing at separate sessions), doctors’ appointments and physical problems must be considered first.

The fiddle player worked in my solo band 40 years ago. We yakked for an hour on the phone about who is and isn’t still alive, and we each summarized our decades of gigs. Larry is still doing rock band gigs, with intermittent success. 

Big Joe recommended the drummer, an old friend from back in his days playing in a Borsch Belt hotel band. I introduced myself to this second Larry over the phone. Since we’d had no prior dealings, the phone call, while friendly, was mostly business.

Tracy, the female singer, recommended a studio close to her house. It’s pretty inexpensive. I’m doing what I can to encourage her to work with me. She recommended her bass player for the sessions. I’ll be meeting him at the rehearsal for the first session.

The band will exist for recording sessions only. I haven’t decided what route to take for performances to publicize the finished product. And, I’m struggling with creating a marketing strategy.

The session seems likely to take place in the second week of February or later. I have a few weeks to prepare. First order of business is to record scratch versions of the tunes on my port-a-studio, then e-mail them off with lead charts to all the musicians working the session.

Hope to have everybody lined up, and rehearsal and recording studios booked, by the end of this week. Pic at the top is of the studio I’m planning to use.

Who is My Target Audience?

Decades ago, I recorded and released CDs without thinking about my intended audience, and without a marketing plan to reach them.

That didn’t work. Great reviews, but prospective listeners didn’t even know where to buy my CDs.

As I prepare to head into the studio to record a new gospel album, I’m also going to prepare a marketing plan. I need to identify my intended audience, and come up with a plan to target it.

Who is my intended audience?

I’ve spent several weeks pondering that question. So who is it? Limited by age? Genre? The traditional Gospel audience is the priority target. That’s who I’ve been playing for the last decade, in churches. A secondary target is the audience for what is called Americana music.

A search for “Gospel Music Business” returns, second from the top, a link to the Gospel Music Association, which tries to sell me a $40 a month subscription. So, the first lesson to learn is that the gospel music biz is like the rest of the music biz, existing mostly to fleece hopeful musicians.

The epicenter of my audience is people who understand and feel the connection between hymns and country, rock and blues. That’s a lot of people, all over the world, but maybe not concentrated by locale.

I have an anchor audience in the two churches where I play, Catholic and Methodist. That’s only a few hundred people, but it’s a start. They’ll be willing to listen to my new hymns and hymn covers. In what setting can I convince them to listen?

The internet is the place to reach this audience. That’s where they’ll hear the songs. I’ll be posting on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, and I’ll need to get the streaming sites going. 

Identifying and targeting my potential audience is a tough hack for me. I’ve never looked at things from this perspective.

Building Up My Voice

I’m still doing the voice exercise my high school choral teacher prescribed, although I’ve adapted it to guitar, not piano.

1. Start at bottom of range, singing long, soft tones over 3 octaves.
2. Scales, major, minor, harmonic and melodic minors.
3. Arpeggios, major and minor

I’m singing Tenor II in men’s chorus, although I probably fit more comfortably with the Baritones. We have twice as many bass and baritone voices as tenors, so I thought I would help out. On a couple of songs, I still have to bail and sing baritone, because they are out of my range.

Surprised how well my voice has held up in old age. My range has diminished, so that I often transpose songs down two or three steps from the key in which I once sang them. I really need to warm up thoroughly every time I sing, but that’s often not possible. My Mendelssohn Club men’s vocal group has very limited rehearsal time.

This week is concert week, one mini-concert at the nursing home and two full concerts in the Old Dutch Church this weekend. I’ll have to find a way to warm up my voice while driving to the performances.

After the concerts, time to shift into preparation for recording my new album. I think I’ll call it “The Revival Tent.” The pic at the top lists the songs. Those with a check mark are my originals. Still writing the lyrics for three of the eight originals.

I’m building my voice toward the upcoming studio sessions, probably happening in late January. Listening to myself via my weekly video of Catholic and Methodist hymns is my primary method of study. I’ll record all the songs for my new album at home on my Zoom R16 port-a-studio, so I’ll be over prepared by the time the sessions occur.

Once this week’s concerts are over, I’ll have almost two months to work on my upcoming album and to devise a marketing and PR scheme for it.

Live-Streaming Problems

I’ve only got one camera, and it has to take in a lot of territory. This is a difficult strategic problem. The viewer needs to see my hands and most of the piano keyboard during my Gospel livestreams, as well as my torso and head.

 

Think the solution might be to buy a 7 foot tall stand for my iPhone so that the perspective of the video is from the right side and above, angling down to include the keyboard. I don’t know yet whether landscape or portrait is the better approach.

Over the next week, I’ll order the tall stand and attempt to find the right height and position for the iPhone video camera. 

The goal here is to display as much of the front of my face, as possible, in the video frame. I’ve been video-ing directly from the side of the piano, and that’s focusing the viewer’s attention on the back of my head, and making me look ancient.

I might need a second, or maybe even a third light to take away most of the shadows and to produce adequate lighting intensity.

Once I get the set correctly lit and the camera position established, how do I quickly set those conditions every time I shoot?

Audio needs some fixing, too.  Great improvement in vocal quality with the Audio Technica condenser mics, but the mix is not quite right. I’m applying reverb at the amplifier/speaker. My digital piano already adds a reverb effect to normal keyboard voices, like grand piano. Adding a second reverb at the amplifier/speaker makes the sound brittle and metallic.

I’m going to have to apply the reverb at the port-a-studio input level to only the voice channel, and cut the reverb from the amplifier/speaker.

Background is a good color. My red sweatshirt really stood out against the blue. Some crisper, more dramatic, and slightly costume like threads would really help.

One future day, I hope to add one or two more camera inputs that I can switch with a foot pedal. First, attend to basics.

How to Market My Gospel Album

Now that I’m committed to producing full band versions of my original hymns in the studio, the next hurdle is developing a plan for marketing those recordings and finding performing venues.

Where to start? I’m entering a brand new world.

I’ve written three hymns: “Show Me the Way,” “All I Can Do is Pray” and “Lord, I Pray for My Children.” 

The major gospel show is, of course, Gaither Music. Two avenues to consider here… submitting my original hymns to the show for their choir to sing, and/or doing a guest appearance on one of their shows.

That’s probably a long way up the ladder of the Gospel world. 

My first stab at marketing is live-streaming my Friday morning hymn rehearsals for Catholic and Methodist services. Friday was my first show. I could mostly see the things I need to fix when I watched the video. It’s always a little painful to see and hear yourself on video and try to evaluate your own performance.

A few people liked the live-stream on Facebook. Eventually, I’ll live-stream simultaneously on YouTube. Not sure if there are other venues I should use. This, I think, is the only effective tool currently at my disposal for PR. When I’m satisfied with the visual and audio quality of the live-streams, I’ll let members of both my congregations know how to watch them.

I’ll put up new scratch recordings of the new hymns and songs I’ve written, and am writing, on YouTube. “Granddaddy Ran Bootleg,” and “All I Can Do is Pray” are currently in process. My goal here is to involve my social media and church friends in the writing and development of these songs.

Learning as I go along. Trying to get my Martin D18 in the shop so that I can begin to work more seriously on my guitar based repertoire.

Working with a Female Vocalist

Working with Myrna in a vocal duo was easy… because she was my wife. Working with Katie was utter madness.. because we both had a significant other tugging at us.

I’ve found a great female country vocalist who has agreed to work with me, but she has a husband. 

What’s the problem here? The male/female vocal duo is so compelling because the voices compliment one another and the romantic image is very evocative for an audience. Myrna and I, and Katie and I, sang love songs to one another. 

Now, imagine you are the spouse and your wife or husband is up there in front of an audience singing love songs to some other woman or man. Katie and I couldn’t find a solution to this. Our significant others were driven mad with jealousy, and with good reason. We were pros at projecting to the audience a classic romantic paradigm.

We weren’t romantically involved, but try telling that to my wife or Katie’s boyfriend.

How to handle this with the country singer? (I’ll call her Olivia to make this easier, although that’s not her name.)

I’m going to try to keep the relationship entirely on a pro level. Katie and I rehearsed endlessly in private. This only intensified the suspicion and jealousy. Not going to do that again. That was what Katie wanted and what she needed to be confident in her ability to perform. (Katie also enjoyed driving her boyfriend crazy with jealousy. It turned her on. She was more interested in provoking men to fight over her than she was in professional success.)

Myrna and I sang together every day. No problem.

Olivia is a confident pro. She performs frequently solo, so the hand holding and repetitive rehearsal probably isn’t necessary.

Here’s how I plan to get Gospel and Country albums in the can and get us out performing. I’m going to purposely keep the contact between us to pro sessions, and avoid being alone with Olivia. I’ll record demo versions of my new songs in my home studio, and put them up on YouTube so that she can run through them at home.

I’m going to pay her for the pro studio sessions. We’ll meet at the studio with the sound engineer and the side musicians present. Probably also somebody to take photos.

After that, it’s going to be up to me to book and promote gigs, and to hire her to perform at them.

I think this will work.