Randyland

As a follow-up to the post What I’ve Been Up To All These Years I realize that I haven’t necessarily kept everyone up on what’s going on now. There’s a lot. Here’s a runup of what’s going down.

Writing: I’ve been doing articles about music in many contexts. The latest is an article in Electronic Musician Magazine that is on the shelves now. We’ve got at least two more queued up, with even more on the way after. We also did a very cool collaborative project with Discmakers.com, Planning Your Album From Beginning To End, which is something we’ve always wanted to write. It just made sense to team up with one of the largest CD manufacturers to do so. The thing is, we couldn’t find anything out there that just told us HOW to MAKE A CD including ALL of the steps involved besides our book. We’re very happy with how it came out. Plus, it exposes the Indie Band Survival Guide to hundreds of thousands of musicians which could benefit from it.

Live Music: I’m playing regular shows with The Pin-Ups, a 1940’s-style music revue. Think Anderson sisters, plus a punchy Sinatra-type male lead. The three ladies are lovely, full of character, and really carry a show. The focus on this group has been playing live in theaters and venues around the city, but we just got a regular monthly show at Green Dolphin Street, which is, as they used to say, “a classy joint.” This is not an easy place to get a regular gig, so it’s something to be proud of. And I’m happy to be playing live music regularly, too. It’s not just because I’m in the group that I say that it’s a show well worth seeing. They really are a great time.

Beatnik Turtle: People have been asking me when Beatnik Turtle is playing next. We do have a show in mid-August that I’ll be announcing soon. But even more exciting is the fact that we’ve been nominated for a JPF Music Award. Now the JPF is a musician’s organization open to ALL musicians, and their awards cover the other 99% of musicians that are never considered for a Grammy. In fact, both independent and established artists have won this award in prior years, so it’s open to everybody. This year, there was a stunning 42,000 albums submitted. Out of that number, only 0.33% were nominated. So it’s been a real honor to get the nomination. The album that was nominated was our 18th album, Sham Rock. A collection of rocked-out Irish drinking songs. We are nominated in the Celtic music category.  I’ll be traveling to Nashville on August 28-30th to attend the Awards ceremony, and to network with fellow musicians. Also, to be on the radio, which I’ll talk about below. Our 19th and 20th albums are in the works, being mixed down now.

Web Stuff: I spend a fair amount of time improving IndieGuide.com, the complete resource for the do-it-yourself musician. It’s got thousands of links, and new functionalitites that I’m adding all of the time. We have a major push to get some stuff done for it, with some exciting new features. More on this when they come out.

Teaching: The feedback from my first foray into Teaching at the Music Industry Workshop was very positive. Multiple sources gave me some great comments, and the students asked when I’d be back. They also booked me for three more dates. So I’ll be doing more teaching coming up. I really enjoy teachning, and had a great time there.

Indie Band Survival Guide: We just got another stunningly good review for the Indie Band Survival Guide by BookPleasures.com. He was also kind enough to review it on Amazon, where we now have six five-star reviews. There have been so many useless books in the category of music that we’re winning people over to it little by little. But we are winning. We’re in this for the long haul.

Radio Appearance: When we go to Nashville in August to attend the JPF Awards, Jason and I will be doing a radio interview for Music Business Radio regarding the Guide, the DIY Music manual, and the website. Not only will we appear on a show with them, we’ll be doing a series of short segments that will appear in future versions of the show, as well as an accomanying PDF with information. The segments are all concrete and practical pieces of advice, such as how to get played on podcasts–as are the PDFs. Our goal with everything related to the book is to help musicians with concrete help, and this is another great opportunity to do that.

Panel Appearances: The weekend after we go to Nashville, I will be appearing again in the Command Line Podcast copyright panel at Dragon*Con, and also doing an interview with Command Line and whoever else wants to interview. Jason and Tom cannot make it this year, but I was the only one willing to travel two weekends in a row. Since I’ll be there in Atlanta alone this year, I’m hoping to geek out this year, and attend some of the types of panels that I’ve always wanted to see that I haven’t gotten to yet. I seem to see some of the coolest people just once a year there, and I don’t want to miss it.

Conventions: Upcoming planned conventions include Dragon*Con, ICON, and BoardGameGeek.CON. Hope to see those of you that I only see once a year at the ‘cons!

Online Hangouts: For those that want to stay in touch, I’ve been spending time on Twitter, Facebook, Pegasus Muck, Dino, and all of my blogs.

…and more.

There’s more. But some are sooper sekrit, and will be coming out later this year.

Finally, I get to go on vacation.

Kinda.

For the last three years, ever since we got the book deal, and we worked on Song of the Day, every time off I got from work was almost always a working vacation. And by that, I don’t mean mostly vacation and a little work; I mean mostly work.

So, the bug list for indieguide.com has been piling up high, and it’s the kind of very intensive coding work that is best done without distractions, and certainly can’t easily be done after work at my daygig at Abbott after working all day.

We have some major features that we want to put in, and I actually enjoy doing this kind of work. I’m committed to making indieguide.com the best resource for indie musicians. And completely free. And the fact that some of these new features have been hanging over my head for the last 6-8 months means that working on it will actually serve to relax me.

But for this entire next week, which I have off, I’m going to be in Lake Geneva, and I hope to do some bikeriding, swimming, and maybe a massage, too. For once, there’s no deadline from an editor (we’ve had two, remember, with two different publishers in different years), and no pool of songs that we have to keep in the bin so we don’t run out at The Song Of The Day.

You know, when they say “Don’t quit your dayjob, kid” I don’t know if they understand that, for people with a full-time job who are also committed to their music, writing, or coding projects (or all three!), that also means, “Don’t take any real vacations anymore, kid.”

For those that know me, and wonder what I’ve been up to, here’s where the time went. Highlights only, and I go back to College, because I literally haven’t seen some of you since then:

• Dec 1993 – Graduated from U of Iowa with a BBA in Information Systems, minor in Computer science. Major focus was on database design/normalization, and, oddly, statistical controls of manufacturing systems, since the MIS department of the U of Iowa grew out of the management sciences department.
• Jan 1994 – Started at Arthur Andersen in their IT department.
• Oct 1997 – Started a Master’s in computer science at DePaul university.
• Dec 1997 – Joined the band that I’m still in today, Beatnik Turtle (http://beatnikturtle.com)
• Circa 1998 – Founded Gamesnight (http://gamesnight.org). Boardgames once a week with friends. That group still continues today.
• Feb 2001 – RandyCon 01 held in Evanston. A tradition that also continues through today. (Randycon.org)
• May 2001 – Completed Masters of Science in Computer Science: Data Communications with a minor in Artificial Intelligence. Graduated with distinction, 4.0/4.0 GPA.
• Fall 2001 – Beatnik Turtle releases debut album, What We’ve Got
• March 2002 – Arthur Andersen sinks due to Enron Scandal, and I was on the deck of the Titanic when it struck the iceburg and sunk. Before it did, one day, we were all let out of work to march through the streets of Chicago wearing a pin that said: “I am Andersen” in order to try put a human face on our company. It didn’t work.
• June 2002 – Started as a contractor at Abbott Laboratories.
• December 2002 – Released second Beatnik Turtle album, Santa Doesn’t Like You
• August 2003 – Became an employee at Abbott Laboratories.
• August 2004 – Released Beatnik Turtle’s Third album, The Cheapass Album with an album cover by Phil Foglio
• Late 2004/early 2005 – The song, Get Out from The Cheapass Album is licensed by ABC Family/Disney for a commercial campaign for a reality show called “Kicked Out”. A show about 20-somethings that were finally kicked out of their parent’s basement–and ironically the theme of the song “Get Out”.
• January 2006 – Released the free, online-only Indie Band Survival Guide, a 101 page PDF. In the next few months, it’s downloaded hundreds of times, and mentioned in the blogosphere by Lawrence Lessig.
• August 2006 – The Indie Band Survival Guide is covered in an article in Billboard magazine. a few months later, it’s covered in another interview article in the Associated Press. Reuters picks up that article too.
• November 2006 – Contacted by a literary agent about making a book version of the Indie Band Survival Guide. Signed with St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan to work on the book through 2007, unfortunately, we had also planned the next item…
• January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007 – The Song Of The Day project, where my band, Beatnik Turtle, wrote, recorded, and released a song for every single day of 2007. 365 total songs. All of them were produced, not written the same day that they were released. Some took months. Each day was a new song. I wrote and played on many songs. I also designed the website.
• February 2007 – Released Beatnik Turtle’s fourth album, Thanks For Coming Out: Beatnik Turtle Live.
• February 2007 – Beatnik Turtle takes part in the RPM challenge, where the goal is to write, record, and produce an album in the month of February. Considering that we were already doing a song every day of 2007, we just produced some of those songs more heavily, and sent it in on March 1st. We stuck to the theme of “Songs about Work.”
• May 2007 – Released Beatnik Turtle’s fifth album, All In A Day’s Work, based on the RPM challenge.
• June 2007 – I become an uncle when my sister has my adorable little niece Chloe.
• June 2007 to December 2007 – Wrote the Indie Band Survival Guide while the rest of the band was having fun recording music.
• February 2008 – Beatnik Turtle’s second foray into the RPM Challenge. Album are all updated and reworked versions of Irish drinking songs. The song “Tell Me Ma” is featured on NPR.
• May 2008 – Released Beatnik Turtle’s sixth album, Sham Rock, based on the RPM Challenge music.
• June 2008 – Released Beatnik Turtle’s seventh through eighteeth album, one for every month of Song of the day. 12 albums. 365 songs.  You can find them on iTunes or any major online music store.
• August 2008 – The Indie Band Survival Guide, my first book, co-written with Jason Feehan, released from St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan.
• August 2008 – The website for the book, The Indie Guide, is released to the world. The site contains tens of thousands of links, resources, and services for Indie Musicians. This is what I spend most of my time working on until this day.
• 2008 to current – A Beatnik Turtle song by myself, Jason, and Tom Roper is used as a theme song to the TV show DVD Geeks, being shown in 26 million homes.
• February 2009 – RPM Challenge, take three. This time, we do a kids album. Or at least, an album about when WE were kids. The twist here is that we recorded the entire album live on webcam so people could watch the process. Album is not yet officially released, however, you can listen to it here or on The Song Of The Day.
• February 2009 – The Indie Band Survival Guide is reworked as an international version, and released from Ebury/Random House as the DIY Music Manual.

Other than that, I really haven’t done that much.

I just realized that, considering recent events, that I want to reconnect with a lot of people I haven’t seen in 10 years, and I haven’t been keeping a blog. So I’m going to be writing, first, posts to catch people up, and then just updates on what’s new.

I’ll also use this blog to coordinate RandyCon, going forward. For those of you that are friends of mine, but don’t know about RandyCon, I hope you can eventually attend. In March, I rent out hotel meeting rooms, and invite all of my friends to get together to hang out for an entire weekend to socialize, play games, and catch up. It started on my birthday when I turned 30, and people have wanted to keep it going since; something I’ve been happy to do.

More details about RandyCon 10 when I arrange the details (yes, it will be 10 years!) A lot of people come in from not only all over the country, but all over the world.

And that’s the best birthday present a person can get.