Off the Stage: The Cloers

Emerging Artist Series: Yn Wine Cafe

On Sunday night, we performed the last public show we will play for a while at Yn Wine Cafe in Charlotte, NC. We were part of an emerging songwriter series that Yn created, and they hope it will begin a relationship between the cafe and local performing songwriters. Also on the bill that night was our good friend, and fellow songwriter, Jamie Kay.

We did this show as a "writer in the round" style event where The Cloers and Jamie Kay took turns sharing song insights with the audience, then performing the songs that we talked about. The show went well, and the staff said that they enjoyed having us out. 

We felt a little sad for this to be our last full show before our CD is finished, but now it is time to take the next step in our music career, and begin working on our project. We will begin recording in a couple of weeks, and will be doing more video blog entries instead of written blog entries during this time. We will still be attending some events, but we are keeping our schedule very rigid during this time so we can finish recording in the time frame that we proposed to the grant committee.  

The Cloers Open For The Chuckleheads

On Saturday night, The Cloers and a few local songwriter friends, Ang Medlin, Tom Williams, and Jamie Kay, opened "in the round" style for the improv comedy group, The Chuckleheads. We played at the Morehead Street Tavern in Charlotte, NC. The Chuckleheads are an improv comedy troupe based out of Charlotte, NC, and is led by our friend, and fellow graduate of the Artist as Entrepreneur program, Scott Pacitti. 

Cross-discipline gigs, in this case - comedy and music, is something that we really enjoy doing. The idea is to bring the musician's audience to see some comedy they haven't seen before, and for the comedy audience to see some music they haven't seen before. Several people at the show came up to us afterwards, including some of the Chucklehead's cast, and told us that they really enjoyed having music while they were waiting for the comedy show to start. This is something that we will definitely do again, and we had a great time laughing along with the audience after our music set was finished. If you're local, check out the Chuckleheads. They really are a ton of fun!

Bloggers & Journalists Meeting: John Grooms

On Sunday, we were able to attend the Bloggers and Journalists (FOJ Future of Journalism) monthly meeting at Amelie's. The guest speaker was John Grooms, Editor at Creative Loafing from 1988 - 2005. Grooms has a new book of essays and musings, Deliver Us from Weasels. The following is his bio from his publisher.

“John Grooms is a multiple award-winning writer and editor, as well as teacher, public speaker, event organizer, music lover, rock history fanatic, husband, father, recovering worrywart, conflicted Catholic, pastry hound and incurable smartass. He has lived in Charlotte since 1976, was editor of Creative Loafing in Charlotte from 1988 until 2005, and has been a featured columnist for the newspaper since then. During his tenure at CL, the newspaper won more than 40 state, regional and national journalism awards. Grooms is the “tragicomic product” of a bilingual postwar home in a small South Carolina town, interspersed with spurts of living in Brussels, Belgium. He's overweight, often profane, has been called a “progressive populist” among other, worse names, and on most days would rather be at the beach.”

We had a curmudgeonly good time, hearing of his experiences in journalism, and getting his opinions on various topics. He is an unabashed liberal and has a great regular column, Boomer with Attitude, in Creative Loafing. As Bob Lefsetz said recently, "It is rough edges that endear fans to you." Rough edges and all, you've got to respect someone who is not afraid to speak their mind. John Grooms is an inspiring reminder to artists and writers to say what's on your mind with conviction. 

Charlotte NSAI Meeting - January

We started our monthly local NSAI meeting with a send off to our former leader, Steve Simpson. Steve served as coordinator for the Charlotte chapter for 5 years, and did a great job growing the group. Fortunately for us, he is only stepping down from the leadership role, and will still be part of our group. We kid him now that he has to bring more songs for critique since he is going to have a lot more free time. Fiona McAllister has stepped up as our main coordinator, and Angelo Melendez and Carl Dews will be co-coordinators for the group. Fiona and Angelo have been working for our group for some time now, so we know that the group will continue to flourish.

Our next activity was to critique the Country Music Association song of the year, "In Color" by Jamey Johnson. When we do these song critiques we look at things like, length of song, title, use of title in the "hook", how long does it take to get into the chorus, does the chorus lift away from the verse, are the verses concise, yet, do they say everything they need to say, etc... Anyway, we songwriters really get into this stuff, and we even started looking at all of the CMA songs of the year for the past several decades. I'm surprised at how many of them really are saying something. Country is accused of just being a genre filled with songs of whiners, cheatin' tunes, or drunk redneck anthems. However, if you look at the songs that have won, "Song of the Year", there are some fine lyrics and emotions in there. And besides, the drunk redneck anthems are a lot of fun, and there is definitely a place in music for that!

This meeting was our annual planning meeting, and there were many great suggestions brought forward for things that the group would like to do this year. We are looking forward to participating in as many as we possibly can.

Lastly, we had our new song, I'm Moving On critiqued by the group, and received lots of positive feedback. We think it's just about ready to put on the CD. Have we mentioned lately how excited we are about recording a CD this year?! : )

* YouTube Video of the song, In Color by Jamey Johnson

NC Songwriters Co-op Board Meeting - January

We have been attending the North Carolina Songwriters Co-op (NCSC) board meetings for a few months now, and really like what they are doing for local artists. We started attending these meetings because we wanted to be in the loop on upcoming Triangle events and to learn about the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area venues and artists.

Well, we are pleased to announce that the coordinator recently asked us to join the Board of Directors. Cate will serve as the Director of Public Relations, and she will handle all of the communications with the local media concerning NCSC events and all press releases. I (John) will serve as the Director of Marketing and Promotions, and my main tasks will be to undertake the re-branding of the NCSC (see new logo at the top of the post), and to promote the NCSC through a new venue recognition program that we created.

You guys who are regular readers of this blog know that we want to help other artists (as we learn new things ourselves), and serving the Co-op is a great opportunity to do that. 2010 is going to be an exciting year for the Co-op, and we look forward to blogging about this new adventure. If you are a performing songwriter, consider joining the NCSC. The joining fee is very reasonable ($25 the first year, and $10 to renew), and it is a great resource for information, honing your live playing skills, improving your song writing, and just good moral support from other artists. We highly recommend it, and have made many new friends from attending Co-op events. Hope to see you at a Co-op event sometime this year!

Seeing Other Artists Play Live

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends, and is ready to start a new year of great adventures. I know we are!! 2009 was a time of learning and networking, and we did a TON of both. This year will be devoted to completing school, finishing our CD project, marketing it, and playing live. We are really looking forward to seeing all of this hard work start to pay off. Even if we are making small strides forward, the point is, we are moving in the right direction.

We have spent a lot of the past 2 weeks seeing some of our friends play music. On Thursday night, we saw our friend, Chris English play a show with his band The North Americans at The Evening Muse. On Saturday night, we saw our friends, Ang Medlin and Tom Williams at the Evening Muse, and on Sunday night, we went to see our friends, Alan Barrington and Steve Simpson play for an emerging artist series at Yn Wine Cafe in Dilworth. They all did a great job, and we enjoyed getting to see them play and hang out for a bit.

We feel that it is important for us to go see other artists play live (especially those who are farther along in their career than we are) and try to learn from them what works and what doesn't work in a live show.  Also, it's valuable for us to see what other local artists sound like live so we can see if our styles would work together for future collaborations and booking opportunities. Just hearing someone's Myspace page, or even their CD doesn't always give you an accurate picture of an artist. It's always best to see someone perform live so you can see what they are really capable of. A live show can't lie!