Vote for Dreams!
Hi all!Have you noticed that more and more of your favorite local and regional artists are sending you requests to "vote for me" in contests, or to play at a festival? Does it seem like some silly exercise in vanity?
I hope not, because as the Music Industry changes, that's going to be the case for a while. Gone are the days when a few Fat Cats in a smoky back room decide who's going to be the Next Big Thing; the current model is how far a musician can get on his own - THEN the labels, promoters, and sponsors start paying attention.
This "democratization" of the Music Business, facilitated by the Internet, is creating a kind of Darwinesque "survival of the fittest" - if the music sucks, it's not going to get much traction beyond immediate family and friends.
I attended a seminar in Houston that included a CMT "gatekeeper". His job is to decide which video goes on the air. He said straight out that when a video gets to his desk (after passing through several levels of "filters"), he creates a chart: How many MySpace Friends, Facebook and Twitter followers, song "listens", and other indications of popularity an artist can show - and whether these indicators are showing growth - are the final arbiter of whether a song video breaks on National Music Television.
So, the next time someone asks you to vote, or sign up for their email list, please consider taking them up on it - it's free, and it makes a HUGE difference in someone's career.
Hey, look! A humble request to join my own email list! I do hope you'll sign up, and I promise that I won't abuse it.
I'M ON THE RADIO!!
IN THE MIXAs you've already read, one of my songs has made it to the radio in what's known as "Regular Rotation" on Fredericksburg's KFAN (107.9 FM)
As you might expect, this is a Pretty Big Deal. It's not quite "I've Made It" - not by a long shot - but for the first time, respected members of the Music Industry (particularly the Texas Music Industry) have placed my work on the same level as Willie Nelson, Walt Wilkins, Monte Montgomery, Ted Nugent, and others that are in our National iPod.
It's not the first time my songs have been on the radio - KXOX (Sweetwater) invited me to debut "San Saba River" live on the air during their weekly program Planet Texas, and Power 103, KEAN, and KBCY have been gracious enough to play my music at specific times, but in all honesty, this is not a song that was written with Radio Airplay in mind (that's coming soon). Up to now, my music has been heard because individuals elected to show their support for Local Music, and played my songs in spite of SERIOUS Fired-Immediately, No-Second-Chances rules against going "off the playlist". I salute these brave souls, and they have my profound gratitude. (I was in Radio before and after the industry was de-regulated, and I am not exaggerating the risks these bandits were taking.)
KFAN lives largely outside these rules (hence the name "Texas Rebel Radio"). The owners, Fritz Media, made the decision years ago to play music based on what they (and their listeners) wanted to hear - a radio model that harkens back to the days of Wolfman Jack. They are still a part of The Music Business, but on their own terms.
THE TASK AHEAD
The challenge now is in several steps:
The song must get requested enough to keep it in the minds of the DJ's (If you're in the Fredericksburg area, and you'd like to hear it, the number is (830) 997-2197.)
I have to get into the studio quickly to produce "And They Dance". (It's amazing how quickly an artist can become Yesterday's News.)
IN RELATED NEWS
I'm going to be on an Internet Radio Station Tuesday, April 14th! If you've seen my MySpace page, you'll notice that one of my "Friends" is Radio Free Texas. I attended an Open Mic that they spinsored last week in San Antonio, and discovered that it was arranged like a contest, with the winner getting this Live Airplay opportunity as a gift from the audience.
I'm submitting "All In" to them to possibly add to their playlist. It's a 99% Fan-Driven station that requires me to ask YOU, Dear Listener, for more help; In order to be played, I have to be requested - first by my friends, then, hopefully, by regular listeners to the station.
THE PATTERN
In decades past, the Major Record Companies put tons of money and effort into an artist, and had a team of people promoting new records to radio stations across the U.S. These days, each artist has to do it himself, and there are a LOT more artists doing it. The ones that get noticed are the ones whose listeners are the most active - emailing friends about new acts, voting in contests, requesting music from Radio and Internet stations, reviewing music on CDBaby and the like, using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and any number of other ways to get the word out.
If it seems like all my dreams are pinned to your participation, I'm afraid it's because it really is. In the final analysis, I can only hope that my music is good enough to merit that kind of effort from that many people. The way things hve started off in 2009, it's starting to seem like this Crazy Dream isn't so crazy after all, and I thank you for encouraging my insanity.
Tony
Changing my mind
Don't worry, I'm not going to quit playing music! (Which, strangely enough, means that I'm "Keeping my Day Job".)
No, this is a shift in my habits of thought; sort of a self-help, Anthony Robbins/Deepak Chopra motivational thing brought about by recent developments in Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Houston, Oklahoma, and on the road between them all. It feels very much like a change of direction, but it's more like a huge acceleration in the direction I've been traveling all my life.
The Road I've Been On
The first underlying principle is this; when I'm completely occupied with the trivial, I can't possibly focus on my long-range goals.
Sounds obvious, right? The challenge is to put something like a van-repair bill into the "Trivial" category. After all, if I can't make it to the show, everything stops, and I'm back to "Would you like fries with that?". This is big. It's in my face, and I had better do something about it NOW. It also tends to happen a good bit, and I don't make the kind of money I did when I was a welder, or a Radio Station manager.
Here's where my attitude comes in to play. I have to decide who Tony Barker is - do I define myself as "a guy with a problem", or am I a musician that's not going to let anything stop him? Am I going to assess the situation, evaluate my resources, and deal with it, or is this going to be that one thing that finally breaks me? The answer - and even some of my ability to deal with it - lies in my mental habits.
I am fortunate in that I have a friend that's a great mechanic. He helps me out on a regular basis by charging me less than his regular rate, and allowing me to "pay out" the labor (God bless you, David). He does this because he's a great guy, but also because he knows that I won't always be ass-scratchin' broke. How does he know it? Because I knew it first. He is a great guy, but he's not going to make this kind of effort for someone that's constantly whining on a barstool about his rotten luck, how somebody else is to blame, and how the auto manufacturer is such a rotten, no-good....
Don't get me wrong, I do my share of whining (just ask David!). It's just that because of my early training, and some interesting reading (Google Robbins and Chopra), I blow off steam, and then get back to work. It's a habit I got from my mom and dad, and I believe it's the difference between getting sympathy and getting help.
"You want sympathy?"
Here's a quote from my dad, "You want sympathy? It's in the dictionary between 'shit" and 'syphllis'." Sounds harsh, doesn't it? Kinda funny, but brutal. That was a hallmark of my dad. Even when the recipe called for big, nasty servings of The Truth, he managed to sweeten it with enough comedy to make it palatable. (God bless him, too.) As kids, my brother and I weren't allowed to have "problems". He said it was a dirty word, and we weren't permitted to use it. Challenges, opportunities, we could have those all day. (In fact, if we ran out, he'd find some for us. He was real helpful like that.)
The lesson was that when we presented him with [the "P" word], that meant that we were done thinking - that we had given up. It was now up to him to deal with the loose bicycle chain, the bully down the street, or how you could possibly divide 9X by three. Once we had demonstrated that we were still in the game, we had all the help we needed, but he wasn't about to unleash a couple of quitters on society with his name on 'em! (This is a strategy that goes over extremely well in the workplace, and in fact it's why he made the effort. "Your boss doesn't want to solve your problems, that's what you were hired for!")
The Change
This basic idea - that what happens to me is up to me - has sustained me through some pretty tough times. Like all of us, I've had the rug jerked out from under me a few times, and I was so proud of my ability to get back up that I never noticed that I was in the same place when I did get back on my feet. Then a cool thing happened to me that brought home some of the same lessons I'd had before, and it started this chain of events that is still unfolding in amazing ways.
Tammy and I were working the Stage Crew for the Kerrvile Wine and Music Festival. My guitar Hero Monte Montgomery was headlining (I have a GREAT story about how cool he was when things were going VERY badly for him, but I'll save that for another blog post), and after the show he let me play his guitar! I have played expensive instruments before, but I could never figure out why someone would spend thousands of dollars on a guitar. Now, I do have a craftsman's appreciation for a well-made tool, but I had always been left with the impression that the main value of all that value was to brag about how much money you spent on your instrument.
This was different. I instantly played so far above my ordinary abilities that it seemed like I was transported to the level of Monte himself. Notes seemed to leap out of the instrument; sounds that were only in my head came pouring out. Going back to my own guitar was a tragedy that I'm still not over.
From that moment, I have put in my head the idea of acquiring a Monte Montgomery Signature Edition Alvarez Yaori guitar, model number MMY-2. It's an actual goal, and I am going after it. My hippie friends call it "putting it out there in the universe". My motivational speaking, self-help teachers call it "visualization". My pastor (who is also a bad-ass guitarist) calls it "putting my prayer request before God". I feel that it is all of the above, and furthermore, I feel this; the van is now in the background. I'll pay David the hundred bucks I still owe him, then get after the main task - being a guy that owns a really nice guitar.
This involves some shifts in my thinking - a different approach to gigs, getting back into the studio, actually changing my mind - from what it was doing, and into doing something else. I started working towards my new goal, and then another wild set of circumstances comes up - the Windows On Texas Showcase in Fredericksburg. Among the many, many cool things that happened there, one lesson became crystal clear; in order to step up and become a Serious Player in the Texas Music Game, I'm going to have to ante up, big time. Promoters, publicists, record labels, they all have a GIANT stack of CD's on their desks made by artists that are looking for the same thing that I am, and one way to get noticed is to buy attention. This is not a new thought for me - one of the songs that will be on the next CD is called...
Life's A Game. It's a Dollar a Point. Go.
It's like buying a house; the bank wants a down payment - not because they need the money (well, not normally), but because they want to know that you can come up with it. They need to know that you're capable of earning and keeping a couple of thousand dollars, and they need to know that you're invested in the deal. The game is rigged - no surprise there. I've always known that you can buy a hit - look at the history of Payola scandals in Radio - l just thought that if I worked hard enough, I could get around a lot of that. To a certain extent, I have, and will continue to do so, but at some point I'll HAVE to surround myself with a team of professionals. This adds a new dimension to the Guitar goal - now the number that I'm chasing is closer to fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. I heard Jack Ingram speak at a conference in Houston, and he said that he's now opening for Big Name folks and playing for 20,000 people, because of his team. He said that when, God willing, he's the headliner for that size venue, it won't be because he's any better, it'll be because his team of promoters, publicists, and other professionals have all done their jobs well.
So. Twenty thousand dollars. This ought to be interesting...
