Flying west to LA from Ontario. A whole new year in which to play – but it’s always so bittersweet – so hard for me to leave.
“all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“Christmas break, a time for touchin’ home – the heart of all [I’ve] known and leavin’ was so hard.” Stan Rogers
It was great to play a couple of songs with Jessica Huebner and Claire Wagner on the McCabe’s Concert Stage for this year’s Holiday Show. It’s been a dream of mine to play Stan Rogers’ poignant “First Christmas Away from Home” on that stage for some time.
Stan Rogers was a much revered Canadian singer-songwriter who died, tragically, in a plane accident on June 2nd, 1983. He was only 33 years old. One of his last concerts was given five days before, on May 28th, at McCabe’s.
We also performed “The Secret of Christmas” written by Van Heusen and Cahn. I heard Ella Fitzgerald’s version of it last year, for the first time, and fell in love with it.
More on this week later – it involves something in January and I don’t want to jinx it…
I’m honored to be named in Music Connection’s year end list of their Top 25 New Music Critiques for 2010. I know that MC receives thousands of submissions, in a year, so I’m thrilled to be among the other 24 artists / bands who are also named there. The magazine’s statement says it best, “Music Connection is dedicated to helping unsigned artists get their music noticed.“
This comes at the end of a really good year. I have spent countless hours sitting at my desk trying, with all my might, to honor the body of work that I recorded on Trust the Sky by putting it out there. I’ve learned a lot, in the process, and will take this experience to the next body of work. I’m excited to be moving on to writing more songs.
Recently, my Dad sent me an article about Daniel Lanois – featured in Canada’s Globe and Mail. Lanois has produced albums for Bob Dylan, U2, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, (and many others) and I noticed a few quotes that I’ll include here.
I have struggled to make music that is really honest and authentic – but it’s difficult to earn a revenue stream from that. Dylan, in a quote from the article says, “Good reviews [sic] don’t sell records.” And Lanois says, “We never make records thinking about the commerciality at the beginning of it. We make music in the hope that we bump into something with substance – something that has a reason to exist. Perhaps by having the fundamental values intact, commerciality can come into play.”
Here’s hoping that I have “bumped into something of substance.” I am deeply encouraged both by Music Connection’s critical praise and also by the review I received, earlier this year, from Paul Zollo. More on that to come…
Thanks to Mark Nardone and Andy Mesecher, at Music Connection.
I am bolstered.
“Why the Mud Flap Girl?” My friends have asked me. “Does it really represent your music?” “Are you trying to be ironic?” I’ll do my best to answer those questions here.
About a year ago, I met Ric Menck. Ric strikes me as an artist who really gets other artists. He’s a musician and songwriter who plays in the revered Indie band Velvet Crush. He’s played drums with Liz Phair, Marianne Faithful, and Aimee Mann. He sent me a Facebook message, earlier this year, and in it he said, “In our culture now, people are used to things happening very quickly. TV shows like American Idol perpetuate the myth that an entertainer can become famous overnight. The reality is, it takes a lifetime for an artist to gestate.”
Gestation. What a great metaphor for the life of an artist.
I’ll offer these broad strokes about my own gestation. Sometimes I’m asked when I started making music. It’s a difficult question to answer. I can’t think of a time, in my life, when it wasn’t there. You can’t take water out of mud.
In the late 90’s, I endured the sudden end of a significant relationship. It’s sounds like a bad stereotype, but those things in life that are the most painful can sometimes lead us to where we’re supposed to go. At that time, I flashed on this image of myself as some girl left on a dirt road, splattered with mud from a late-model pick-up truck as is screeched away. In my imagining, there were chrome “mud flap girls” on the back end of the the truck, and they were also splattered with mud as it sped off. I didn’t realize, at the time, that being hit with that particular “imagined mud” would be the start of a better life. Songs started pouring out of me.
Enter, the Mud Flap Girl. As a young girl, I’d written embryonic songs – but now I wrote with a vengeance. I wrote my first serious body of work and did a short pressing / limited release of Mud Flap Girl my “first CD” in the early 2000’s. I set up my music publishing, through BMI, and named it after my curvy, mud-soaked friend.
Here were are, about 10 years later, and she has a new life. Philip Warbasse has put her into the design for a QR Code, to represent my music, through his company Print 2D. This new technology is, to quote Philip, “In it’s infancy now but within a year or two, this will be mainstream.” Users can scan the 2D Barcode, with a smartphone or iphone, and be taken to the music via a designed mobile environment. The “readers / reader apps” for this technology can be easily downloaded – but will become more and more available, in cell phones, as the platform takes hold. I’m thrilled to be in on the front end of this curve. I’m sure there will be many more applications…
As to the Mud Flap Girl, “Does she really represent my music?” I dunno – I like to think that there’s a certain grittiness to what I do musically. There’s a little dirt under my writer’s nails, a small-town innocence, a femininity…
“Am I trying to be ironic?” Absolutely.
“If you can be gigging, gig.”
None of us are too far from the “world’s stage”, but it takes tremendous courage to step out there.
“Life shrinks and expands according to one’s courage.” Anais Nin
I’m still reeling from the past weekend at the annual TAXI Road Rally. I was told, the day before the Rally, that 2,182 people were registered to attend. It was a great event. I’m proud to say that I performed at all 3 Open Mic nights. I estimate that there were about 70 performance spots – on each night – which comes to 210 of us (about 10%) who mustered the courage to get up and perform live in front of our peers. It was an exhilarating (and nerve-wracking) experience – but very memorable.
It’s amazing to bounce around at a conference full of hopefuls from all over the country – all over the world! I met musicians from Canada, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and from all over the United States. I liken the event to bouncing around in a giant human pinball machine full of like-minded people. Everyone is very friendly and happy to share what they are doing musically.
I’m still sifting through business cards and materials that I amassed at the Rally – trying to make sense of it all and to begin the process of following up.
I’ll have more to say about it as the weeks progress – but for now, I wanted to get a post up to say thanks to Michael Laskow for creating TAXI and the Rally.
I think it’s been a couple of years since I first met Philip Warbasse on the streets of Santa Monica. He approached me with a discernable genuineness in his eyes. I was lugging my gig-wagon home, after an evening of busking on the 3rd Street Promenade, and he complimented me on the music he’d heard me making earlier in the evening. He said that he was interested in creating a new way for artists to reach out to their audience and that he’d like to talk with me about it. We exchanged information – and here we are a couple of years later.
Philip has a PR / Design firm, here in Santa Monica, called Warbasse Design. He’s done a lot with film and TV (Iron Man 2, True Blood) and various other campaigns locally, internationally, and – in the end – globally. The world has become so small. [There are links to Warbasse Design and Print 2D on the Blogroll.]
The way it works is there is a specially designed 2D Barcode that people can scan, on their cell phones, to take them directly to an experience of music, a ring-tone, biographical content, and social media. The possibilities are wide open – depending on the campaign…
I feel so lucky that Philip has taken me on as one of his first ventures into the music realm. I am witnessing his entrepreneurial drive and work ethic first-hand and I appreciate his faith in me so much.
I have a sense that there will be much more to blog about in reference to this “little break” – which feels like one of those ones that will have a ripple effect… I’m so excited about the prospects.
How cool is it that there are people who love to support independent, unsigned artists? I think it’s amazing. I feel so fortunate to have met TEE-M (Tariq Mirza) and Mike Stark, two LA DJ’s who, for the past 6 years, have been supporting local (and not local artists) whom they have featured on TEE-M’s UNsigned Music Show on WPMD.org.
I was honored to be included in the 6th Anniversary Show which was pre-recorded on Sunday, October 24th. The podcast will be available as of November 14th at: http://wpmd.org/ (there’s a link to WPMD.org on the Blogroll)
Mike Stark has built his beautiful, independent LA Radio Studio with a picturesque view of the LA Harbor. The studio has a great vibe – and it was hoppin’ this past Sunday. Previously, and in conjunction with Mike’s studio, Tariq and Mike also broadcast out of the studio at Cerritos College
As I continue on this path, I think about how fortunate I am to meet people who are so invested in being a part of bringing great, independent music to a world’s stage.
