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March 26, 2004

Caught In The Act

Photographer and miracle-worker Rannie Turingan took a ton of photos at SXSW this year, including these shots of Fray Cafe 4.

Me, I haven't even completely unpacked from Austin yet, so the precious few photos that I took (the camera ended up being left at the hotel with my laptop more often than not) should be posted shortly. Right. Yep.

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March 24, 2004

The Big Opener

Some guy named Josh or somethingThe Big Opener. Every performing artist on the scene gets a chance at one at some point in their career. The Big Opener is when you land an opening slot for a larger, more well-known artist, thus providing an opportunity for wider exposure and CD sales. It's not necessarily a make-or-break gig, but you'd be foolish to treat it as such.

The scruffy guy on the right is Josh Kelley, who's touring in support of his Hollywood Records release For The Ride Home. I'm opening for Josh at Neumo's on April 18th.

This show will probably sell out. Oh man.

What this means is that for one day next month, I get to step out of the comfortable world of cozy coffeehouses and open mics and into the shadowy, smoke-and-sawdust world of the live rock show. It's a place I haven't been in a long while, and due to a random exchange of business cards on the plane, I'm being catapulted headlong back into it for a brief moment.

Ask anyone who's done a string of Big Openers and you'll probably find that they're not at all uncommon and maybe even anticlimactic. And now that I've wistfully blogged it here, I fully expect to see the show cancelled or to get booted from the bill for some reason. (The Mature Artist does not pin his or her hopes to any one Big Opener) But I want to mark this moment down, my first Big Opener, and this being my second trip down the DIY rock star trail, and I want to savor it just a bit more this time around. This is a weblog, after all.

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March 23, 2004

Mraz-ification!

Something potentially big and cool has come my way, but I'm a bit superstitious about spilling details before they're final. It's not a make-or-break situation by any stretch, but it's definitely one that, if given the green light, requires decisive action and probably beyond-call-of-duty execution. Am I ready? Yes please, bring it.

My excursion to Texas and fast approaching shows of April are leaving little time for new demos, so in their stead I offer this new rock arrangement of One Sure Thing (3.7 MB), which I've been toying with for several months now. I need to go back and add something interesting to the instrumental break; that rhythm piano part just ain't cuttin' it.

I know that some are likely to take umbrage at the Mraz-ification of this tune. I've tried to retain the spirit of the original acoustic recording, but I should mention that this arrangement is how I've always envisioned this song. The means to record it were just out of my reach at the time. Now I can tinker away in the basement like a mad scientist (or, if you prefer, George Lucas), gleefully revising history at my leisure!

And there's a very, very good chance that Laurie herself will be able to contribute new harmony vocals. In the meantime, consider this a rough draft of what's to come.

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March 22, 2004

Look And Feel Years Younger

The new social networking application!Every year for the past five years, I've attended South By Southwest. And every year, two things happen.

The first thing is to come down with a textbook case of what Ohio's alt-country hero Tim Easton, during his all-too-short set at Opal Divine's west of Congress, referred to as "SXSW throat." The humid, lukewarm Austin springtime and the dry, over-air-conditioned environs of the convention center combine to produce cracking sore throats and endless sniffles. Just enough to be thoroughly annoying but never blossoming into a full-on headcold.

The second more remarkable thing: after a day or so of being immersed in the chaos of SXSW, I start to feel different. Better. I stand up straighter. I start grinning like an idiot. I'm fearless, I approach strangers: hi, I'm Scott. Oh hey, you're that person who did that thing that everyone said was really cool? Great to meet you. Surrounded by so many dead sexy people, I daresay I start to feel a bit more sexy myself. I rediscover that I really, truly like people.

I become a different person, the person I was ten years ago, before job security and car insurance and vague, existential dread started squeezing me like a grapefruit.

I like this guy. I'd like him to stick around for awhile.

March 18, 2004

Little Richard sez: Sign The Checks!

Hello from balmy Austin TX where I'm totally immersed in the whirlwind that is SXSW Music. I've no time to post and hardly any time to check email, so I'll probably do a summary of the festival, Fray Cafe and the Tellers show next week when I have better access. A few people emailed me with links to photos of the Fray Cafe event (thanks!) and I promise to post them as soon as I get more than three hours of sleep.

Much thanks to my astute and articulate SXSWi panelists Annie, Chris and Kevin for their time and expertise, and to MJK for planting the seed.

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March 12, 2004

Flyering And Other Futile Acts

Here in Seattle, where it seems every other person is playing in some sort of band, any given telephone pole is perpetually carpeted with flyers announcing every type of show. It's pretty cool.

On one of the mailing lists I'm subscribed to, there's an ongoing discussion on the effectiveness of flyers in promoting a concert. I'm keenly interested in this, because now that I'm playing live more often, I'm revisting every musician's biggest challenge: getting people to show up.

There are bands here in Seattle that do a great job at flyering. When they play, I can't avoid knowing it, 'cause it's all over town. But I can't really say that I've ever gone to a show just because I saw a flyer. I think I read somewhere that for every 100 flyers put up, you might get one person to attend.

So I'm forcing myself to revisit the reasons why I decide to attend a rock show instead of staying home, drinking beer and watching Buffy reruns. It comes down to one or more of these:

  1. I'm already a fan and crazy about the music
  2. I've heard so many good things about the artist from trusted sources (friends, favorite 'zines, etc.) that I'm reasonably sure I'll have a good time
  3. I know the artist personally, or have some personal connection

When I started playing in bands a hundred years ago, I made the same mistakes that most young artists do, thinking that advertising was as good as public relations. I'd put up 500 flyers around town, chalk all the sidewalks around the University, and then wonder why only ten people showed up. What I didn't understand was that while flyers are great for letting people know about a show, they're not so great for getting people to care. They don't do much towards fulfilling A, B and C above.

I've recently been in touch with a guy who has a band in my old stomping grounds of Akron, OH. He was attending school around the same time that my band and I were doing everything we could to get the word out. So I asked him: did he remember my old band from ten years ago? And he said: yep, because all the chalking and flyers made it unavoidable. But he couldn't recall ever coming to see us play.

I still think flyers and related stuff are important in building awareness, but I don't think it's enough to run around plastering them all over town and expect people to swarm in the doors. So the question becomes: what more can I do to address A, B and C?

Just thinking out loud. More on this later.

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March 9, 2004

Like A Speeding Train

My performance at Fray Cafe in Austin is less than a week away. And after that, the panel I'm moderating. And after that, the show with the Tellers. I'm stressing out over bringing two guitars on the plane. I'll definitely have to check one of them. Today I'm picking up an ATA-rated travel case for the Telecaster. The acoustic will have to come on board with me.

I hope. Geez, I'm so freaked out. Not so much about the possibility of losing an instrument (although that would supremely suck), but the fact that if it does happen, I'll have to scramble to find a guitar, in Austin, the week of SXSW. All the traveler's insurance in the world won't guarantee I'll be able to find a guitar on one day's notice. Gosh wouldn't that be fun?

Must calm down now.

I hope to be posting sporadically from the conference, especially the music part, and taking lots of pictures. I might end up taking a lot of notes and transcribing them later, because carrying the iBook around last year was a real drag.

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March 8, 2004

Magnatune @ SXSW

Also at SXSW this year will be Magnatune founder John Buckman, who recently launched a TypePad-powered weblog. Magnatune is throwing a party with Creative Commons on March 18th. It's good to see a CC event happening during SXSW Music, as I think their past efforts have been a little too focused on the computer-geek end of things.

March 4, 2004

Live in Austin

I've updated and tweaked the live show page to include more details about where I'll be in Austin this year. The most interesting development is I'll be playing guitar for the Tellers at the GoGirlsMusic showcase on Friday 3/19. The Tellers are a female-led glitter-rock outfit from Cleveland, and their bassist, Derek, was the original bassist on several of the early Walkingbirds songs. Their drummer has lined up a few hours at a rehearsal space in the Austin area, so yeah, this should be a lot of fun.

I just found out today that the showcase will be hosted by Rachael Sage, the reigning queen of DIY indie artists, heir apparent to the thrones of DiFranco and Ferrick. So, that's pretty cool too.

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March 3, 2004

Reasoning

I bought an Oxygen 8 MIDI controller which arrived a few weeks ago but I only got around to hooking it up last night. Man, what did we do in the days before USB? The thing was up and running in less than five minutes. I messed around with my audio card's lame built-in sound banks for awhile, but then I got the idea to dig up and install my hardly-ever-used copy of Reason which I originally bought for the iBook. I had totally forgotten how incredible Reason is, and how fantastic its NN-19 sampler and Subtractor synth modules sound. (Plus, it was fun just watching the animated level and pitch wheel controls move in sync with the Oxygen 8 controls.) It's really renewed my creative spark, since just messing around for a few hours has given me ideas on how to push my folk-rock stuff in more interesting directions.

In other news, Delimiter is now available as uglified HTML. Eventually I'll slap a stylesheet on it.

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