Imagine (John Lennon cover)
I tried my hand at covering Imagine by John Lennon last night, using only GarageBand and my MacBook’s built-in microphone. The quality is surprisingly good, aside from a few spurts of distortion near the end where I (unfortunately) did not practice proper mic technique whilst belting out the final chorus. Have a listen for yourself, I think I’m going to give recording it another go some time with all my proper equipment set up.
Control (Acoustic Version)
I decided to do a simple live recording of my acoustic version of “Control”. I changed up the chord progression since we (Broken Halo) put it on our latest release, the Stars Align EP. Listen and let me know what you think. I’ll be posting more new material soon.
Get Your (Live) Act Together, Regina
I recently spent the week traveling around Saskatchewan for business – I hit up Saskatoon, Watrous, Regina, Yorkton and Melville over four days and saw clients large and small. I trek west for work every couple of months and every time I leave Winnipeg I am reminded of how much I love my dear home town.
Don’t get me wrong, there are interesting things about places in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon has a decent music scene, but not nearly as good as Winnipeg. Watrous’ claim to fame is both the Manitou Springs Mineral Spa and the fact that it was selected as a location for TSN’s Sportscentre broadcast in August 2009.
As I tweeted about on Thursday, I was mighty disappointed with the music scene on a Thursday night in Regina. I want to go into a bit more detail than 140 characters will allow.
It was Thursday night and I had just finished a long day of client visits. None of my Regina coworkers were up to anything but I had a rental car and some free time, so I decided to check out what was going on downtown. I hit up a sushi place first and then popped next door to a pub called O’Hanlon’s to see what was going on. I took a little tour around the pub, which looked really nice. High ceilings, just the right amount of Guinness and Keith’s ads (and mirrors) on the walls. So I go up to the barkeep, a nondescript looking chap wearing plaid, as cool kids do, and asked him if there was to be a band at the pub that night. No, but a DJ is spinning tonight. Okay, no thanks, unless it’s RJD2, Kid Koala or Girl Talk, I’ll pass.
So I ask him if there are any other venues around with live music tonight. His reply? “No, not on a Thursday.”
Not on a Thursday? Maybe Winnipeg has spoiled me, but I expect there to be live music happening somewhere pretty much every night of the week. Especially Thursday through Sunday. That’s a given, isn’t it?
I implore you, people of Regina – either do a better job of promoting your music, if in fact there is music happening that said bartender is unaware of, or just make it happen. That’s all. Have a lovely weekend.
Summer Happiness Mix
I’m loving the current sunny weather in Winnipeg, and as such it has inspired me to make a happy summer mix, comprised entirely of songs that are like a musical ear-to-ear smile. What are the songs that make you the happiest when you hear them? Here’s some obvious choices I’ve got so far:
1. Martin Sexton – Happy (from Seeds) [bonus – here’s a making of Happy video from Martin in the studio]
2. Ron Sexsmith – Happiness (from Retriever)
3. Rufus Wainwright – California (from Poses)
4. Amos Lee – Bottom of the Barrel (from Amos Lee)
5. Jenny Lewis featuring Elvis Costello – Carpetbaggers (from Acid Tongue)
And now it’s your turn to help me out … input, please!
Bandcamp: It’s not just for music geeks.
I’ve been attempting to ramp up some hype about my band’s new album, which we’ll be recording in just a few short weeks. In order to do so, I decided that it was time I made the rounds with our first record one more time.
As it happens, another band we’ve played with, and that I really like called Run The Red Light (formerly Retrograde), uses a website called Bandcamp to promote their album online. It’s a social media-friendly, simple-to-set up solution to sell your music online and make it easy for the fans to download it.
Their pages have a nice clean design that focuses your attention on the cover art and their feature-rich flash music player.
You can choose fixed prices for each album and track, or just let the customer decide what they think they should pay for your music (a la Radiohead). They also provide you with handy tools like embed codes for players, so you can easily share on blogs and other websites. Sweet, huh? This is one of the smartest music websites I’ve seen in a while. I’m still waiting on the relaunch of CDBaby.com, but until then, I’m happy with Bandcamp.
Meanwhile, in the other universe…
Broken Halo's self-titled debut album.
I don’t normally do posts about personal stuff. I’m not sure why. No one else writes on this blog … it belongs to me, so why not make it personal? Well, here we go – a bit of a personal update from yours truly.
A lot of changes have come about for me as of late. I decided to leave my job at the end of the month in order to take on more freelance work this summer and focus on music. Yeah, music. Readers of this blog who don’t know me probably won’t know that I’m the singer of a rock band called Broken Halo. We’ve been together 7 years, done 1 rather successful tour to Western Canada (granted, that was 5 years ago) and released one album that has slowly but surely been selling copies or individual downloads online.
But it’s been two years since we released any music and it’s about time we did it again. So this time around, with my advertising and marketing experience in my back pocket, we’re going all out on making sure this album succeeds both critically and commercially.
There have been a lot of bands out there who start out going it alone and are actually making a career out of it. So who’s to say a little rock band from Winnipeg couldn’t do the same, with a little drive, some smart marketing and an assload of touring? My hope is, no one.
Feist: The Oblivious Tribe Leader
Feist: A beautiful voice and an oblivious tribe leader?
I’ve been spending some time listening to the audiobook version of Tribes: We Need You To Lead by Seth Godin. In the book, Godin talks about how people inside organizations and around the world are all connected, and need to be connected by tribes. These tribes are the cirlces of people centred around a leader – someone who is creative, confident and who the members of the tribe look up to, follow and emulate.
Godin cites The Grateful Dead as a key example of how a tribe can lead to success in any industry. The Dead didn’t rise to fame by climbing to the top of the charts with a hit single. They relied on the Deadheads, their legion of unwavering fans, to see their live shows and buy their albums. They were a tribe who helped the band be successful by loyally attending shows and honestly spreading their love of the band among their friends. This, says Godin, is the power of tribes and the mark of leaders – people who see value in something and want to share it in an unselfish way.
Feist, despite her mainstream success with 1-2-3-4, also depends on her loyal fans to keep things active in her career. She rewards fans by sharing personal anecdotes at shows and other gestures that tell fans “hey, I know you, I know where you’re from and I care about things you care about.” By rights, she’s an accessible star.
She has a significant amount of influence as the leader of her own tribe. But when that power is taken for granted, as it was the night of her show in Winnipeg, it can really reflect poorly on her. Let me explain. During “Secret Heart”, Feist had her camera operator put the camera on the floor, pointed at the back of her shoes. She then lifted each sole to reveal the words “THE PYRAMID” written on two small pieces of paper, taped to her soles.
My immediate inference was that the “secret” she was “dying to reveal” was that she was having an after-show party at The Pyramid (a popular music venue in downtown Winnipeg). Two hundred, yes, 200, other people thought exactly the same thing, and marched straight down to the Pyramid after the show.
Meanwhile, Dave McKeegan, the proprietor of said venue, was enjoying his night off by having a few beers with his friends and watching Monday Night Football. The one staff member actually at the venue called him in a panic when people began to line up outside, abuzz with chatter of when their precious tribe leader would make her appearance.
McKeegan begrudgingly made his way down to work as the fervent Feist fans poured into the Pyramid, waiting patiently for the maiden of the eve to arrive. The two staff members served drinks to fans and the ebb of conversations continued to move from hope to disbelief to anger and back again. But she did not show. Nor apparently did she intend on ever doing so.
According to a sound engineer who spoke with the artist shortly after her concert’s end, her intent was to give a shout-out to one of her favourite venues in the city. She had an early flight the next morning to skirt off to Regina to prepare for her next show. However, rumors of her appearance at The Pyramid were going around before her show commenced, so her intent is muddled in the sea of speculation. It’s possible she at one point intended on showing up and then decided against it after an energetic but tiring performance. Touring takes a lot out of artists. I will give her that.
But her failure as a tribe leader is her apparent broken promise to her loyal fans, who were eager to make a connection. Successful tribe leaders, as Godin says, are people who are willing to converse with the tribe, share ideas and give of themselves as members of that tribe.
At the very least, if she felt unwell or too exhausted to make an appearance at The Pyramid, she could have sent someone to inform people at the venue she wasn’t going to be there.
I think this is where common courtesy meets the mark of a leader. The more we all understand the influence we have on people as leaders of our own tribes, the better leaders we will become and the more successful we will be.
I think I’m going to send Feist a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. Just for kicks.