So those of you who know anything about me know that I don’t play out live very often.  There are several reasons for this – not the least of which is, as an original artist, you have to either be a band, or else have a band that can play your stuff – neither of which applies to me.

However, about 2-5 times a year, I get out to play cover material.  Sometimes, this is under the rubrick of Max Night and the Rocketlaunchers, sometimes it’s at an open jam, and, in this case, it’s because someone offered the space and time.  I’m tremendously grateful that he did. Read more

The opening lines of my bio sum up this blog post pretty well. How does an artist present themselves to the world when they don’t fit into a predefined box?

I started using a service – headliner.fm – which allows you to selectively share your social media space with other artists, on a case-by-case basis. So, for instance, I’ll receive a request from PeteBongoPlayer to “broadcast” a message for him across my Twitter stream, or Facebook / MySpace page.

In the end – this message comes from me – and followers are very very very dear to me, so I absolutely won’t accept one of these if I don’t love the music.

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So I was heading down to a local restaurant for a mid-afternoon meetup with a newfound but dear friend.

As it was a beautiful, crisp fall day, I decided to walk it – not too far, and Lord knows I can use the exercise.  So I grabbed my headphones and player, thinking that it’d be a good opportunity to do some writing listening.  (playing a few of the tracks I’m working on while doing something else, for a change.)  In the past, just being with the music in this way, outside of a working environment, has occasionally brought some newfound words or phrases – or just a new take on something.  It’s never been profound, but sometimes a little helpful.

So off I went.  Had a great time with my friend, and after a couple of hours, his wife came – they were staying for dinner, so I said my goodbyes and headed out the door.

Once outside, I put the ‘phones back on and started the trek home – and a remarkable thing happened. Read more

Back in 2009, I wrote a post called “Honor Art” , that began my online project –  it talks about filesharing and its’ effects on indie musicians, among other things.

Those of you who follow me with any regularity know that I give some of my music away often. I do it voluntarily, and am truly happy when those tracks get shared by others.

Well, there’s  a GREAT interview with Don Henley at Penn State’s “Collegian” , where he talks about filesharing, among other things – and I thought he was so eloquent about it.

“A whole new ethical — or rather unethical — paradigm has emerged in which the illegal downloading of music is looked upon, primarily by those who do it, as a kind of Robin Hood activity.

This is due, to some degree, to the fact that the only face of the music industry that most people ever see, is manifested by wealthy rock, pop, rap and hip-hop stars, flaunting their lifestyles. But behind all that ostentation and glitziness is an entire chain of jobs numbering in the thousands.

We employ 100 people in our touring crew, not counting the local crews that augment ours in every city. There are hundreds of music-related office jobs at record companies, publishing companies, accounting firms and legal firms. Read more

They were referring to this: