Welcome to my first (official) post, blog, newsletter or whatever you wanna call it. I appreciate you signing up to my email list. I wasn’t sure how to jump into this and I wanted the timing to be right. I am assuming that if you are here, it is because you have listened and have enjoyed my music….I sure hope you did. Since the release of my first album, things have been unfolding rather rapidly for me and I’ve tried to learn as much from the experience as possible. The do’s and don’t do’s, the learning curves, and the facts that there are a lot of bloodsuckers waiting in the shadows.
When I started writing and working on that first album, many were vocal about which approach I should take regarding my music. Should I play what’s popular on the radio, should I cater to the new “Outlaw”/Alternative country market, should I do this or do that ?!?!? But to me it was clear from day one, even before I ever set foot in a recording studio. I had to make a record I could first and foremost, listen by myself at home or in my truck. I had to be it’s biggest fan. All this might sound egotistical but it makes sense if you think about it. Too many artists record music to cater and compromise to a specific trend but then they can’t listen to their own music. How can fans relate to your music when you can’t relate to it yourself…..this was not going to happen to this country boy. Too many take all the praise when an album is successful but blames the producers, the musicians, the labels, the weather, the Pope, among others when the album ‘Bombs’…but not me and let me tell you why. I stand behind everything I put out there because I refuse to be pushed in any sub-genre or marginalized in a trend. I make the kind of music I love and the hell if it’s not commercial enough for radio or if it doesn’t sound like a Blake Shelton record….What you hear is what you get.
Since the release of the first album, I was awestruck at the attention it received with little effort on my part. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to promote it. My song WHISKEY DRINKIN COWBOY seems to have really hit a chord with people. It has enjoyed radio airplay around the globe and the song and the album sales were over whelming….Thank you all.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I think I did something right, I stayed true to myself and my identity. It somehow chanelled itself in my music and from there it filtered down to the listeners.
The same holds true for my upcoming album. I have kept my integrity and that little promise I made to myself…NEVER COMPROMISE !!!! Someone told me that I would be judged on this album and I’m afraid I have to agree. Was WHISKEY DRINKIN COWBOY and the 9 other tracks from that first album just a ‘fluke’? Did I get lucky? I read somewhere that you have your whole life to write your first album but only a much shorter amount of time for the 2nd one. Well, I am ready because I think it is a much stronger album and my songwriting kept true to what you expect of me. I can’t wait to see how you will like it. I am very excited to be bringing you these new compositions….12 new songs by yours truly.
After I’d finish telling someone about the fact that I was back from a recording session in Nashville, the questions that follows seems to be about a deep curiosity about how the recording process evolved. To walk them through the whole ordeal is too time consuming. I wish I could of brought everyone along on this journey. I decided that this story would be the perfect vehicle to kick off this newsletter (in the following one). Starting next week I will start to share this story with you. It will be called ‘THE ROAD TO NASHVILLE’ and it will broken in parts. So every week you will be getting another installment of how things unfolded for me in Nashville, Tennessee to record this upcoming album.
The story starts in a bar (surprise, surprise) and will jump around a bit and it will go in great details as I am trying to suck you in the story and relive it with me. Keep in mind that I am a songwriter, not a novelist so I will write it the way I think it and I won’t waste much time editing this sucker.
At the end of the series, I will include a song I wrote a long, long time ago about TWANGVILLE called ‘NASHVILLE TONIGHT’.
When I started writing and working on that first album, many were vocal about which approach I should take regarding my music. Should I play what’s popular on the radio, should I cater to the new “Outlaw”/Alternative country market, should I do this or do that ?!?!? But to me it was clear from day one, even before I ever set foot in a recording studio. I had to make a record I could first and foremost, listen by myself at home or in my truck. I had to be it’s biggest fan. All this might sound egotistical but it makes sense if you think about it. Too many artists record music to cater and compromise to a specific trend but then they can’t listen to their own music. How can fans relate to your music when you can’t relate to it yourself…..this was not going to happen to this country boy. Too many take all the praise when an album is successful but blames the producers, the musicians, the labels, the weather, the Pope, among others when the album ‘Bombs’…but not me and let me tell you why. I stand behind everything I put out there because I refuse to be pushed in any sub-genre or marginalized in a trend. I make the kind of music I love and the hell if it’s not commercial enough for radio or if it doesn’t sound like a Blake Shelton record….What you hear is what you get.
Since the release of the first album, I was awestruck at the attention it received with little effort on my part. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to promote it. My song WHISKEY DRINKIN COWBOY seems to have really hit a chord with people. It has enjoyed radio airplay around the globe and the song and the album sales were over whelming….Thank you all.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I think I did something right, I stayed true to myself and my identity. It somehow chanelled itself in my music and from there it filtered down to the listeners.
The same holds true for my upcoming album. I have kept my integrity and that little promise I made to myself…NEVER COMPROMISE !!!! Someone told me that I would be judged on this album and I’m afraid I have to agree. Was WHISKEY DRINKIN COWBOY and the 9 other tracks from that first album just a ‘fluke’? Did I get lucky? I read somewhere that you have your whole life to write your first album but only a much shorter amount of time for the 2nd one. Well, I am ready because I think it is a much stronger album and my songwriting kept true to what you expect of me. I can’t wait to see how you will like it. I am very excited to be bringing you these new compositions….12 new songs by yours truly.
After I’d finish telling someone about the fact that I was back from a recording session in Nashville, the questions that follows seems to be about a deep curiosity about how the recording process evolved. To walk them through the whole ordeal is too time consuming. I wish I could of brought everyone along on this journey. I decided that this story would be the perfect vehicle to kick off this newsletter (in the following one). Starting next week I will start to share this story with you. It will be called ‘THE ROAD TO NASHVILLE’ and it will broken in parts. So every week you will be getting another installment of how things unfolded for me in Nashville, Tennessee to record this upcoming album.
The story starts in a bar (surprise, surprise) and will jump around a bit and it will go in great details as I am trying to suck you in the story and relive it with me. Keep in mind that I am a songwriter, not a novelist so I will write it the way I think it and I won’t waste much time editing this sucker.
At the end of the series, I will include a song I wrote a long, long time ago about TWANGVILLE called ‘NASHVILLE TONIGHT’.