Off the Stage: The Cloers

Open Mic @ The Evening Muse & A Surprise Performance

A few days ago, we received a really great surprise. A very talented singer-songwriter friend of ours, Paul Atkinson, asked us to open for him this Wednesday night at The Evening Muse. Everyone who lives around our area knows that this is THE place for singer-songwriters to perform. It is very difficult to get a show there unless you have a large local following. Well, we don't, but we have a lot of supportive friends and family who have said that they will be there to see us. So, we are really fortunate to live in a great community where a lot of folks support live, local music.

Since this opportunity was so last minute, we have been doing a ton to promote the show. I wrote out 30 personal emails to our close friends and supporters asking (begging) them to come out to The Muse to show them that people will support locals even during the week. I sent out 53 Facebook invites as well, and have even resorted to calling a few people. You know who you are!

But, the biggest thing we knew we could do to promote this show so late in the game was to attend The Evening Muse open mic night last night. Every Monday night, between 60-70 people show up to hear new (and some experienced) talent. It is so much fun, and they really appreciate if you show up to the Monday night open mic and let the audience know that you will be playing at the venue sometime within the next two weeks.

The Find Your Muse event has performers draw numbers to see what order they will play in, then each person (or group) plays 2 songs or for 10 minutes. In the middle of the 4 hour open mic, they always have a featured performer play their songs for 30 minutes. Last night's band was, "The Lesser Pauls".  They were really fun to watch, and the singer has such a great voice.

We performed the songs, "Make Me Cry", and "I Want To Say". The audience was so quiet while we were performing that it freaked me out a little bit. Then I realized, oh yeah, they are ACTUALLY listening!  DUH!  

We heard a lot of great songs, and made some new friends. And I think a few of the Monday night attendees are going to be able to come to the show on Wednesday night.  Have we said how excited we are at this moment. Pinch us, please!

Arts & Science Council: Emerging Artist Grant Application Meeting

This week we attended a grant information meeting hosted by our local Arts & Science council. We are applying for the Regional Artist Grant where an artist can apply for up to $5000.00. We are considered an "Emerging Artist", so we are applying for the $3000.00 grant. Grants are free money and do not have to paid back. But, it is difficult to receive one unless you have worked very hard to earn one.

This is why we are so pleased that our local council accounts for new or upcoming artists. There aren't many grants available to new artists, so we are very fortunate to live in this state where we can apply. We are willing to work hard to build a strong case in our grant application.

As far as the meeting goes, we spent an hour and a half discussing the required information, criteria for judging, how to fill out the forms, as well as a question/answer session so that everyone would feel like it was possible to get started with the application.

We are gathering all of our support paperwork, and are recording our first tracks to be able to submit our samples to be judged for artistic merit. Now, you can be the most talented artist in the world, but if you don't turn in a strong proposal package, you won't be awarded a grant.

So, we have a lot to do over the next couple of weeks, but we are up for the challenge!

Our Monthly NSAI Meeting - July

Tonight was our monthly NSAI meeting. One of our coordinators, Angelo Melendez, made arrangements for our group to have Brian Hartzog, a local indie artist, come speak to our group. His topic was, "Indie Music Success Stories". Now, as die hard indie artists, we were really excited about tonight's lecture. We are SO passionate about the concept of the do it yourself artist, that we see many people's eyes glaze over when we start talking about it. We tend to become very manic and talk fast, but it's because we realize all of the opportunities that are available to today's music artist.

The first half of Brian's lecture dealt with the new Web 2.0 concept. Web 2.0 is a new way of thinking about the internet and tools. Today, the internet can be thought of not only as a research tool, but as a large collection of social networks. As the standard recording industry model is falling by the wayside, and as commercial radio is greatly consolidated, music is beginning to spread the way it used to be; mostly by the educated word of mouth. In today's musical climate, the only way to build a rabid, true fan base is by working for it. You have to find your audience, and it's not going to be as wide or as large as if you were being played on commercial radio.  So...how do you do this?

1.  Figure out EXACTLY who you are. What are your interests? What do you feel 

     passionate about? What are you a believer in? Where is your niche?

2.  Find out who else is passionate about the same things you are and then research

     where they hang out. Join clubs and groups online. Join clubs and groups in 

     your local area where you can talk to people face to face. Become an activist for

     your cause. Today, music is about networking! Find people who love what you 

     do and focus on them. Don't spread your efforts too thin. Go where people will

     "get" you and build an audience there.

3.  Don't hold on to your music too tightly. Today, obscurity is the enemy, not piracy.

     The more people who hear your music, the more opportunities that will come

     your way. Don't be so afraid to share your music, that no one ever hears it.

4.  Make personal, targeted contact with your fans. The days of mass emailing and

     "blasts" are over. Don't annoy the people who really love what you do. It 

      is more effective to do monthly newsletters and not email folks on a daily or 

      weekly basis.

5.  Build demand BEFORE touring. Most artists love playing live. But, how fun is it to

     play to an empty room? Social networking can really be helpful for finding your

     audience. Go online, find out larger groups who would like to hear you play live,    

     and then go THERE to play. Randomly booking yourself into venues with no

     promotion or fan demand is a dead end for a live music career.        

6.  Be authentic. Promote yourself just as you are. Even if people don't necessarily

     agree with your views, at least they can appreciate that you are being honest. I 

     am a fan of many artists who I don't necessarily believe in what they are saying.

     I just love them for who they are.

The last half of Brian's presentation was about modern day music success stories. There are many artists who are making a great living as full time artists who have done it their own way - circumventing the old model of staking your entire career on waiting for someone to "discover" you. They work hard, promote themselves, and don't have to compromise their music or message. THEY still have creative control over their music, and no one tells them that they must play somewhere or face a fine from your management or label if you don't. If you want to check our some of the artists he spoke about, you can look at the stories of John Taglieri, Jonathan Coulton, Ani DiFranco, Ember Swift, Ellis Paul, Craig Bickhardt, Rachael Sage. These are just a few artists who took their career into their own hands, and have really done great things. I encourage you to research what they have done, how they got where they are, and begin using some of these tools and techniques to promote your music.

On a personal note, we presented song #9 for the CD at tonight's meeting. We received some good feedback, and are excited that we are only one song away from completing the writing for the album.

The Business Side of Art

This week has mostly been about getting the business side of "The Cloers" in order. We took 5 hours on Thursday and made an extensive recording, personal, and business budget. Kind of depressing when you see it on paper, but at least we know where we stand now with all of our finances. On Tuesday, we made the trip down to our county Register of Deeds, and filed a Doing Business As/Assumed Named filing for The Cloers. Overall, that went pretty smoothly, and we were in and out in 45 minutes. Not bad! Then we headed over to our business bank account holder, and tried to get new checks printed. That's where we ran into a snag. They said that we can't have Velvet Rope Records and The Cloers on the same checks. We will try again next week to speak to another representative, and if they won't do it, then it will be a search for a new bank to host our business account or have 2 separate accounts.

This week we finished the 9th song re-write for the CD. This was a fairly new song, so it was more writing than re-writing. We are pretty pleased with ourselves, and have 1 more song to re-write next week. Also, we were excited to finish another song that will not be on the CD, but will be part of the live show. It is a song that we started a few years ago, and realized that it was probably going to end up being a funny song. We will need a little levity in our show because most of our writing is so serious. John wrote a funny song last week that we will do as a duet. I am looking forward to everybody hearing these two. After the CD is finished, we will probably post the 2 funny songs as video. For some reason, it's hard to get funny songs to translate to just audio sometimes.  Oh well.

Our new hard drive for the studio computer finally arrive, so John spent 3 days installing it and all of the recording software. So, it looks like we will begin laying down tracks at the end of next week. It feels like it is taking FOREVER to just get started, but in the larger scheme of things, what's a couple of more weeks when we have been wanting to record for years.