PROMOTION...

Daughter’s speech tournament (with dad helping judge) was at Mt. Hood Community College, which has its own radio station, operated by students. It’s a dying breed: KMHD is one of (I think) only 2 in the Portland market where individual disc jockeys have complete control over the setlists on their own shows. Independent stations like this are the only place left where one can play the promotion game like it was played 40 years ago, and get a song on the air by getting it into the hands of an interested disc jockey–so I took my own advice and dropped by with a CD.
I did have the good fortune to run into the disc jockey doing the next show–waiting in the lobby–so he and I got to talk a little, about the station, about my music, and about the sad stqate of the music industry and the difficulties independent artists have in getting exposure. Country music isn’t his bag, but he will pass it on, and maybe–just maybe–it’ll get played. (I may never know. The college is 125 miles away, and I can’t get their radio station from the house.)
The lesson–there’s always a lesson, remember–is: Always have a couple press kits in the car. Never know when you might need them. (All I had was CDs–and I found myself apologizing for not having a press kit available.) The press kit, by the way, includes (following the instructions in the "Getting Heard" book) an 8x10 glossy promotional photo, brochure with photos, "about Joe" text, and some testimonials about how great I am (always best to have that come from other people), and a copy of the CD.
I also picked up a copy of Willamette Week, the ultra-left "alternative" Portland newspaper that’s read by a lot of college students. Why? A statistic I ran into in an article in a "straight" magazine about Portland’s music scene–reportedly, 194 bands were advertised in one recent issue of Willamette Week. That means live music was being advertised in some 194 places–and wouldn’t I like to know what those places are? Now, it’s unlikely most of those places would be interested in my music–country music is not big in the Portland area–but the ads may tell me which places might. (I’ll pass it on to our local heavy-metal band, too–they may get more mileage out of this than I.)
That same article in the "straight" magazine was claiming Portland was becoming a hotbed of independent music (part of the evidence cited was that CDBaby is located in Portland). That may make it worthwhile to join (finally) the Portland Songwriters Assn., even though Portland is kind of a pain to get to or around in. Between the PSA and the local Folklore Society, there seems to be an open mike almost every night–and there didn’t use to be a few years ago.
RISK-TAKERS CONCERT went okay; some songs came off really well, others didn’t. One of the difficulties was all the band members never were in the same place at the same time to practice–and two of them (very good musicians both) never went to any of the practices at all. Next time–I assume everyone wants to do this again–we could revive a trick I used with The Band, passing around *.mp3 files and lyric sheets ahead of time. Anyone who wants the group to play something (1) provide a recording of what the song is supposed to sound like, (2) provide lead sheets, tab sheets, or lyric sheets with the words and chords, and (3) be prepared to lead the song and have everybody else follow you. Could take that one step further and do the "circle thing"–everybody on stage does one song each, in constant rotation. That means if there are ten people on stage, each one is going to be leading 10% of the songs. Some of our guys and gals are shy, though–might be hard to convince ‘em.