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.