Brian Brushwood, NSFWShow, and Amazon

You have to put yourself out there. Take some risks. That’s how you end up in the right place at the right time. If you wait for it without being proactive, you’ll have opportunity after opportunity pass you by.

So I’ve got a quick story. Well, at least it will be quick if you read it with the same enthusiasm that it is being written in. Otherwise, it will be long, but still well worth it.

It all started last Tuesday, when my friend Courtney invited Kelly and I to see a magic show, Brian Brushwood. Her friend, Jon, was the stage hand for Brian, so she wanted to see him, and the show was at Albright College, all of 2 minutes from my house. Despite it being climbing night and knowing nothing about Brushwood, we decided to go. It’d be something different, at the very least.

 So we went. Ironically, I ended up as one of the randomly selected volunteers from the audience. It’s always comical when someone who doesn’t go to the school gets something… It was fun and the show was enjoyable. Sure, some of it was transparent, but some things were genuinely baffling.

After the show, we hung out with Courtney and Jon and his family for a while. Good people. Fun people. People we had just met.

In our conversation, it came up that I was a musician. Describing my music isn’t always the easiest, so after the attempt, I left them with a few cards. Jon said he’d check it out further and let me know if there was any place for my music within any of Brian’s podcasts.

Now I’ve never done a podcast. I’ve tried to work out streaming details, but it’s hard to get a guitar through a skype type system. But Brian is a podcast fiend. He’s most well known for Scam School, one about scamming free drinks from your friends and things of the like. Then he also has a comedy one on TWiT, NSFWShow. Conveniently, NSFW had a summer music series that their fans wanted them to continue year-round. More conveniently, their regular Tuesday night show was bumped to Wednesday night at Jon’s house.

So on Wednesday I get a text from Jon, inviting me to play on the show that night. The potential for thousands of people to be turned on to my music is kinda hard to pass up, so Kelly and I headed an hour and a half to Jon’s house for dinner and a podcast (keep in mind that this family we had only met the night before).

The whole night was great. Despite some technical difficulties with the podcast, it was a lot of fun and something completely different. Plus, dinner was awesome! Things sounded decent on our end, but apparently it sounded pretty horrific when littered with Skype artifacts. But somehow that was ok.

Because these guys have dedicated fans. Take, for instance, their comedy album, Night Attack. It was being pushed that night and the fans responded well. Well enough to push them to #5 in overall mp3 sales on amazon. These were fans who were gifting the artists with their own album in order to push it to the top. Sure, it’s a cheat on the system, but the point is that these fans are life fans.

So when I was on, people more or less ignored that the sound quality was horrendous. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have, but these guys did. And then they went online and listened to actual recordings. And then they went to amazon and went nuts.

Right now I have no idea what “went nuts” entails, but here’s what I saw the next morning:

Sure, it’s only amazon, but there’s still gotta be some force behind moving up to #5. Even if it were 10-20 sales… The best part is that, at least in the “Easy Listening” genre, I haven’t left the top 100 since. I was up as high as 85 on Sunday, but found that I had dropped to 12 by Monday morning. That pretty well means that I am continuing to have sales even after the live podcast. Which, though there were 1000 people live, they average something like 30,000 downloads on the podcast.

Again, it’s all about being proactive at putting yourself out there. Every sale counts. Every illegal torrent counts. They’re all potential fans. I just took a risk and put myself in front of upwards of 30,000 people – more than I’ve played in front of throughout my cumulative career! Plus I got an awesome dinner! The only downside was that I was tired the next day. Tired. You can only play in front of the same crowd so many times before you end up tired anyway, so why not take some chances?

Also, if you haven't picked up my debut album, Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe, then help keep me in the charts at amazon HERE.

And you can watch the podcast too (warning - I haven't finished watching it yet, but it probably has a good bit of language)

Review: Matt Stevens - Relic

Sometimes your mind is blown to the point where you need to just stop and think about whatever subject matter is in question. And as your whole world slows down, you contemplate what you know and what you think you know. You then realize how finite your understanding is and how vast even the smallest of particles is.

Like Tuesday, when I found out that they just beat light. Like, the constant, c. Einstein’s relativity was based largely around c. Physics is based around c. And they beat it.

Mind blown.

And yes, their results need to be verified, but even the thought that something might be faster than light is mind-boggling. The implications…

 Then Tuesday night, I saw magician Brian Brushwood (blog on that later!). Sure, some stuff was transparent, but other parts were just crazy. Like when he had a nail come out of his eye?? You expect to see bizarre stuff, but that’s just nuts. Mind blown.

Then there was last week. I finally got a chance to listen to Matt Stevens’ new album, Relic. And I say finally not because it just came out. No, I’ve had it for a week or so. But these are albums, not singles, and deserve to be listened to as such. Anything less and you miss the point. Like a magician, you expect Stevens to blow your mind with something on his album. And so much like a magician, the only chance you have of understanding these events is with your undivided attention, away from any distractions.

So I took a menial task at work and cashed in on the otherwise mindless time, listening a few times through. Mind blown.

Matt Stevens is known for live looping, innovation, and being quirky and unexpected. Both his writing ability and his ability to deliver are inspirational and merit the following that has kept net chatter active and growing for the past few years. Whether it is organizing streaming festivals or releasing a solo album or releasing an album with one of his projects (The Fierce and the Dead, Yonks), Stevens has given fans reasons to tune in and stay active.

Relic is no exception. It delivers what we have come to expect from Stevens since his 2008 release, Echo. That is, something completely different.

See, at the advent of Stevens’ solo career, live looping was something few people had heard of. There were the one man bands paraded as side-shows and then a small underground following of live loopers who were too far experimental to be seen by the public eye. Were there others? Yes, but none quite like Stevens. With his debut album, Echo, Stevens pushed loop-centric experimental acoustic guitar work into an accessible realm. He did things that seemed on the surface to be normal and harmless. It was stuff that sounded friendly, but was done by one man, not a 6 piece band, and was counted in 11/8 or 13/8 or worse.

Following Echo, Stevens released Ghost. We all expected what we knew from Echo, but what we got was Echo mixed with a band. Still distinctly Stevens, but with additional percussion and a bass line or two. This blindsided fans, but they liked it. And as the albums success grew, so did Stevens’ career.

All the while, Stevens has released live album after live album in a Dave Matthews type fashion. Despite only having 3 full studio albums, including Relic, I believe I have about 7 solo albums from the last 3 or 4 years. Then there are the projects… This level of quality output has left fans seldom at a point when there wasn’t something new. Where your top 40 artists release singles every few months, Stevens seems to release entire albums. All quality.

So we have gone up to the point of Relic, where you would think that Stevens would have settled into some type of formula. After all, if it’s working for you, why change? But that’s not music. Stevens wanted something new and fresh, so once again, we were blindsided for the better.

First, I noted that there was a lot more of everyone else. Stevens is still the main act in his solo work, but there is more presence with drum samples and the like. It gives it a little more accessibility to those who are afraid of the solo guitarist, yet its complexity still keeps everyone coming back.

After that, I noticed that the album doesn’t have the same flow as Echo or Ghost. Songs are less reliant on one another. Not so much as MR. BUNGLE, but enough to make you step back. At first, this seems abrasive, but after a few times through, it see that it comes together to build something. It’s something he hasn’t done before; taken elements of chaos and placing them throughout the album. You don’t see it on his other albums because harmonic cohesion was a focal point of the earlier album themes.

Chaos is new. And fresh. And Frost? Frost is the track that Stevens figured would begin to alienate fans. It reminded me of the way that Dream Theater alienates fans whenever they have an album that is heavier or softer than the previous; which is every time. Or the way that Meat Puppets incorporated country in with acid rock to rile people up. Maybe not in that way, but it’s just so far removed from your view of “Matt Stevens.” It’s heavy. It’s aggressive. It’s in your face. It’s metal. Legitimately. It reminds you that Stevens’ original influences on songs like Burning Bandstands were bands like Metallica. It seems like all of the experimental acoustic guitarists out there have roots in metal. Regardless, I thought my itunes had skipped to a different artist. It was bizarre at first.

And then you see that that’s what the album was building towards. People who are into pretty sounding acoustic music often view heavy metal as this ugly chaotic beast. It freaks people out and alienates them. Relic is an album peppered with organized chaos, but you don’t want to see it until Frost. Then it makes sense. And could really turn people off. But Stevens’ fans aren’t fans of the pretty acoustic stuff; they’re fans of music. And this is a beautiful counterpoint to the preceding tracks on the album, fully showcasing music. Mind blown.

But it’s not over. END 30 is the last song on the album. It starts like so many of Stevens’ songs do; nice and peaceful; loopy. And ends as a noise track. The album takes this path through peaceful melodies, into full-throttle abrasive distortion and dissonance, and ends in a sea of noise; a sea of nothingness.

The Blue Marsh Canteen: Blue Marsh Idol

Irony is a great thing, most of the time.

A lot of times it comes at the end of a moderately bad situation, adding some comedic relief if you can see it that way. Usually, that’s my stance on things.

This particularly case of irony came from a post a few days ago. I’m at work, so I don’t have the exact words that I wrote, but it was something like: “you need to be told that you’re not good enough and that your music sucks.” The post was on motivation.

To give some more context of this story, understand my position – I know I am a decent guitarist. But I’ll seldom say any more than that. Sure, I’m better than a lot of people, but that’s not good enough. I’m proud of what I’ve written and what I do, but it’s a far cry from what I’d like to be able to do.

So where this all comes into play is at The Blue Marsh Canteen open mic. They’ve been running the “Blue Marsh Idol” for the past couple months and I had made it to the final round. Honestly, I wasn’t concerned. Sure, I can be a bit arrogant. There was one guy, Byron, who I had seen play there before who was a legitimately decent songwriter, so I figured it’d come down to the two of us or something like that.

Oh yeah, and the winner gets a new Jackson guitar. As many of you know, I have moved into the realm of collecting guitars. A new guitar as a prize would be a great addition to the lot. So you could say there was something riding on it. Given the nature of the event, I even went out of my way to come up with different arrangements for a couple of my songs, just to spice things up a bit.

Anyway, everyone played and really only one person stuck out to me, Byron. Actually, he was the only other person to play all originals. And they were good. The others were pretty cut and dry covers – not different arrangements or anything uniquely their own. That bugs me.

Then the results were tallied to make the top 3, where there would be a one song flash round. I didn’t make it (Byron ended up winning. Congratulations! You played a great set.).

There are different ways of looking at the phrase “not good enough.” In one sense, you could be not good enough technically or vocally. Maybe your songwriting is just not good enough. Then there is a seldom used not-good-enough, where you are not good enough to sway opinion.

See, at a place like the Blue Marsh Canteen, you have to sway people onto the side that says that music doesn’t have to have words. It’s common among society. Regardless of how much technicality or passion is behind a song, you still have to be good enough to sway peoples opinion in your favor. If someone is predisposed to like covers and sing-alongs, then you have to be good enough to pull their attention away from that.

Given my technical ability and progressive writing ability in comparison to some of the other contestants, I don’t think that those were the shortcomings of the set. I think it boils down to not being good enough to sway opinions on what I was playing. Regardless, at the end of the day I wasn’t good enough at something to be able to move to the final 3. That means I have work to do.

Motivation

What no one wants to say, but you needs to hear, and you need to be reminded of periodically –

You’re not good enough. Your music sucks.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. It doesn’t matter. The point is that that should be a trigger. You need to be pushed so hard that you either collapse and give up, or you push back so hard that you prove everyone wrong. See, when you think the world is against you, that’s all you have; to give up or to push through with every ounce of your being. And without pushing that hard, you’ll always fall short.

Giving 110% is a thing of the past. If you want to do that, you become a doctor or a lawyer, not a musician. As a doctor or lawyer, even getting through school, you have the world telling you that statistically you won’t make it through to the next level. My engineering class started with about 60 students. We ended with 23. 23 could give what it took.

But with music, so often a free ride is expected. Musicians are notorious for expecting success out of waking up at noon, wasting more time, and jamming for an hour or two a day. They’re the ones who have a handful of their friends and their parents telling them that their music is great and that they’ve got what it takes. Wake up.

Sure, there’s a lot of natural gifting that needs to be there and a lot of being at the right place at the right time. It is about who you know, but you also have to have the drive and perseverance to constantly demand more of yourself. You need 110% towards music or you need to be doing something else.

There will always be flukes; the stars that appear overnight. Blame it on the Disney Channel and Youtube, but don’t look at them for a success plan. If you do, you might as well be playing the lottery; you’re set up to fail. Make your keep by earning it.

You have to try your hardest and fail. You have to succeed and consider it failure because you didn’t do enough. You have to push yourself like you’re at the bottom even if you aren’t. Or give up.