general fuzz

After having several unnerving discussions about the potential rearing of “children”, we launched into a finely tuned indulgent weekend. Two movies (Wall-E + Wanted) and two shows (Tea Leaf Green + Bay Area Rock Fest) = awww yeah.

Of note was the second show - which consisted of four bands, all of the prog rock variety, or what I like to call “nerd metal”. They hailed from Sweden, Germany, SF, and wherever the likes of Dream Theater comes from. It was insanely fast, intensely composed, and flawlessly executed theatrical glam metal at its finest. Ripping guitars synched with double kick drums, soaring keyboards and a dramatic falsetto male singer to top off the perfect prog sandwich. I was pretty happy in the very male dominated crowd, though my normal show patter with strangers didn’t float as well as usual. Fortunately, the band members were happy to chat, so I wasn’t too lonely. The hippies, unsurprisingly, were no where to be seen.

The headliners were “Liquid Tension Expirement”, a band comprised of three members of Dream Theater (the ULTIMATE prog band, though I think Dragonforce is a strong contender) and a ludicrous bass player name Tony Levin. Mike F. (whattup in Portand!) gave me LTE cds many years back, so I was actually very familiar with their brand of vocal-less but ludicrous prog insanity. They performed flawless interpretations of the tunes along with a few jaw dropping solo ventures along the way. Instinctively, my hands formed devil horns, and I fiercely threw ‘em up to join the others already proudly wavering in the air. Nerd metal at its finest.

June was all about not spending time in SF. I went to Boulder, CO to experience the Tuteur family reunion. My actual genetic relationship to the Tuteurs is fairly distant, but it was an excuse to spend time with the Kirsch clan, meet some folks from around the world, and check out Boulder.

I learned that Boulder kicks ass. Tons of micro brews, live music everywhere, in a rather picturesque setting, what with the mountains. The nice hotel that the Tuteurs stayed at had multiple bars attached to it - a fancy one and a cool one on the lobby level, and then I discovered a set of stairs going downwards that led to the coolest dive bar (”the Catacombs”) I’ve ever been to. My brother and I pretty much took up residency there during the evenings, accidentally making friends with the bartenders, one who suggested we “knock the balls around together” in the future. Aw yeah.

The most amazing and ambitious undertaking I’ve ever heard of in improvisational livetronica.

One winter, not so long ago, Stina took me on a mystery date to see the Broadway style stage adaption of “White Christmas”, which I enjoyed less then you’d imagine.

Last week I took Stina on a mystery date to exact revenge - I took her to see “Point Break Live“, a fairly low budget stage adaption of the Keanu Reeves extreme sports thriller. It turned out to be both hysterical and extremely clever. First off, someone from the audience gets to play the role of Keanu (Jonny Utah) for the entire performance. A lady holds up cue cards while giving ample direction, occasionally tackling Utah when the need arises. The other actors do fantastic, over the top renditions of the other main characters from the film. There’s unlikely use of minimal props and ample audience involvement.

Turned out to be good times - so poor on the revenge front.

I think WTF Dave knocked it out of the park with his last two comics.

I spread the “what I learned” post around the internet a little bit, and got some interesting feedback. Some people really resonated with my experience, and some people rejected it pretty strongly. I got some excellent advice along the way - like the idea of delaying the release of an album for a couple months to allow for a little emotional distance.

It also helped clarify that it is really important to me that other people listen to my music. That is not the case for everyone, though I imagine that is the case for the majority of musicians. I feel that there are a few people in this world that will really resonate with my music, and I want to maximize the potential for that discovery to occur.

A number of people listened to my music because of my blog post. I made a few new fans and got some feedback by complaining about promotion and the lack of feedback. The irony was not lost on me.

The ultimate validation came today in my inbox though. I received this email:

Subject: its travis from String Cheese

hey man you gave me cool abberations at some Zilla or eoto show recently. I often get home and give the cds i get given a listen. I listened to yours and kept listening …it was in permanent rotation in my car for months.

good work.

T

I got unlikely feedback from a musician whom I deeply respect. I’m riding pretty high today, and I’m on the cusp of finishing album #5.

Awww yeah.

In this years California vs. Maui Boccee Ball tournement, California triumphed, leaving the cumulative score at 1 - 1.


Gail says “boo.”

After living life at half speed in Maui with Gail and Dan, we literally hit the ground running on our return to SF on Saturday night. I went straight from the plane to Cafe Du Nord to catch the later half of “Mayflowers 3″ to bask in the glow of good friends and general fuzz collaborators - two which you’ll be introduced to on the upcoming release. Dave SG and Erin had been keeping our apartment company during our vacation, and were there on our return. They spent the next day hiking around Mt. Tam, and returned to our pad freshly engaged - so we duly made some serious merry. Thats something we excel in.

The next day brought the sad news that Betty “Grannie” Rudden, Cristina’s last surviving grandmother, had passed away after a bout of health issues. It sounded like she was ready to go and was finally at peace. We headed to DC on Wednesday (now +6 hours timezone from Maui) and attended the very touching memorial service with the entire Rudden family on Thursday. It was almost the entire clan that I had met one year previous for Grannie’s 90th, and though they were grieving her loss, they were able to celebrate her life. Although I only knew Grannie from two experiences: my wedding (when she was still up and partying at 12:30am california time) and her 90th birthday extravaganza, it was obvious to me that she was a remarkable woman. Her giant family is a both a testament and legacy.

It is a rare and special time for a family of that size to be together, and the love was almost palpable. Twelve children under the age of 9 also create a special kind of chaos that I’ve never experienced before. There were also four 9 week old shitzu’s whom I was rather obsessed with. Once again, I somehow gathered a lot of memories during our 48 hours with the Rudden clan.

My family is rather small and is spread all across the country. We are not so close and I see cousins very infrequently. I’ve only met folks from the Rudden clan once or twice before, but I already really feel part of their family, which is one of the greatest privileges I’ve ever known.

I’m having a dandy time on vacation. Gail is taking vegan deserts to the extreme (in scope and deliciousness). Stina is in her happy place - napping by the ocean.

Going outside my normal daily context with little on the agenda grants a healthy opportunity for reflection. I’m finishing up work on my fifth (!) album. For some reason, right now, I’m having a hard time getting really amped about it. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’ll be a true reflection of my musical growth and I’m really really proud of it. The thing is - I’ve now gone around the block several times with the musical releases. The final push is always a little daunting/tedious. I’ve invested so much of my emotional self into my music and at this point I’ve grown a pretty thick shell about it.

Let me lay out a couple of things I’ve learned in the past almost decade of producing free music. They would probably apply to any aspiring musician. Many of them may be obvious and intuitive, but it’s always helpful to take stock.

Lesson 1

No one cares about my music the way I do. There’s no reason for them to - for me its a primary extension of self. It’s what I pour myself into, laboring, debating, molding, and refining for a ridiculous number of hours. Then, after all this toil and triumph, I release an album, where all my pride and insecurities are balled up in an explosive state of nervous excitement. My friends and fans will support and celebrate with me, which is truly amazing, but it’s important to recognize that most people don’t care about it nor understand the effort it takes. It’s important (though almost impossible) not to have expectations of how my music will be received. What’s most important its how I feel about my music. You’ll hear this again and again when you’re an artist - it just took experience for me to internalize it.

This is so true for so many things in life. I watch a movie, and when the credits are rolling I start thinking about what to do next. Only when I start watching the “making of” on the DVD do I appreciate how amazing the process of creating the movie was. So for my last album “Cool Aberrations”, I created a page talking about how I collaborated with all the musicians. It gives a listener some insight to the creation process, which made the music more interesting to listen to.

It’s always a good idea to talk to people about the process of creating something, be it an event, a piece of art, a cake, or whatever. I’m often oblivious of the extraordinary effort it takes to accomplish a task.

Lesson 2

When I released my first two albums, I really pushed my music on my friends, family, and peers, since, well, there’s already an established relationship. What I didn’t recognize is that many people I know don’t really care about music. Then theres are those who do, don’t really dig my downtempo stylings. While of course there are exceptions, I finally recognized this isn’t really my target audience. My target audience are folks who dig donwtempo, melodic electronica, which is a certainly a niche category.

Lesson 3

Why was no one coming to my website to download my free music for the first few years? Because no one knew about it. I had to learn the art of promotion. Since I’m not trying to sell my music, the traditional channels - i.e. labels - are not available. I must contact the radio stations, magazines, websites, blogs, and forums myself. Occasionally a fan will help spread the word - and to those people I am incredibly grateful.

Successful promotion turns out to be cast a wide a net as possible, putting a lot of effort in spreading the word, sending out cds, and getting very very little back. You have to accept a lot of rejection. I’ve learned to be happy if 5% of my emails or mailings gets a response - that is, not even a positive response, but a message indicating that the party will or did check out my music. It’s not really something that I enjoy, and with each release, my net has gotten larger - so I’m about to embark on my most ambitious promotional campaign yet.

Lesson 4

Just because people know about something, doesn’t mean they’ll care. When I hand someone a business card, realistically, there’s a minuscule chance they’ll go check out my website. When I hand someone a cd, there’s maybe a 50% chance they’ll listen to it. The best time to hand someone a cd is when they’re about to go their car, and I can suggest they check it out on their journey. We now live in an era where data is free, and people collect it without using it. Humans like to have stuff. If they do end up on my website and download an album or track, it may get lost in the shuffle of other downloads. I only recently added the option to listen to my music directly off the website - this was a big omission on my part.

Lesson 5

Unless your music is simple and poppy, or incredibly accessible, most people won’t be able to make sense of it on first listen, and consequently not return for a second listen. I can not approach my own music with fresh ears - I’m intimate with every second of it. Its great to have someone who’s not a huge music head listen to my music before I release it to gauge how most people will receive it. Its helped shape the ordering of the tracks. Accessible music will always be more popular then complex music - putting “acclimate” as my first track turned out to be an excellent move. I’ve learned that it often takes many listens for people to start really enjoying my music.

My favorite story is of a co-worker who’s cd player broke with my cd in it, so they had to listen to it all day on repeat. The next day he told me never to stop writing music.

My next album will not be very accessible. At least I now know what to expect. The advantage of being totally independent is that I can choose to make musical decisions like this. I’m writing more complicated music because that’s what I want to do.

Lesson 6

This is the most important thing I’ve learned - the small percentage that do care and listen to my music, don’t think how important it is for me to get feedback from them. This is completely normal. How often to do you appreciate something and think “I should tell the artist (or whatever) how much I enjoy their art?” Not often. Since the process of acquiring my music is completely devoid of personal interaction (click on a link on a website), there’s nothing bonding the downloader to me. They download the music, and perhaps listen to it sometime down the line. Maybe they like it - maybe the don’t. I will most likely never get feedback. The thing I’ve taken away from this is to always contact artists when I enjoy their work. Its a great habit. Or if an artist is serious about soliciting feedback, both negative and positive, I try to do so. They always really appreciate it.

In Conclusion

I don’t mean to sound like its a negative experience to create and release music - its not. There’s simply a lot of challenges I never imagined. I absolutely celebrate the tools, ability, and lifestyle that allows me to craft the music that I want to. I’m still in awe that there’s a distribution method that allows me to share my music at almost no cost to the entire world.

We are still very much at the beginning of the musical explosion thats about to take place. The tools that are available completely eliminate the cost barrier to create music. As this generation learns those tools, the variety and quantity of output will be staggering.

Good times ahead. And good times right now.

I would love to hear what other lessons musicians have learned, or your experiences with anything I mentioned.

I’ve recently stumbled upon a fantastic music website called The Sixty One. Its sorta like Digg for music, only there’s a cool gaming element. You “bump” tunes you dig, and then if other people then “bump” that tune, you get points. You level up, get new abilities as a user, it fabulous.  I’m having a lot of fun and finding seriously good music.

Anyhow, if you decide to join, please give me a “bump.” Not cause I’m “coming down” off “herion” or anything, because I wanna level up. Get me some more uploads.

Word.