New, Quick Work

I used to write songs quickly, then make quick and dirty recordings of them, then stick them up on my old blog with a little write up and just go with it. I guess the reason I stopped doing that was because I quit recording stuff quickly, then I quit writing quickly, then I sort of quit writing.

Last night I once again wrote and recorded a quick song, so I'm posting it. When I say quick, I mean less than an hour from concept to uploaded. I was playing around responding to a great flash story about breaking up with the comma -- a story with no commas in it at all. So I wrote a brief narrative about a blues song with no "C"s in it -- neither the letter nor the note. Once I'd gone to the trouble of writing the ultra simple lyric (which really doesn't have any "C"s), I decided to go ahead and put some music with it. I cheated on the key though: it's in G, which does, in fact, contain plenty of "C"s.

Well, without further fluff, here's "Break of Day":

[Break Of Day]

Live at the Attic

Back in April, Shelle, Matt and I had the pleasure of performing at Eddie's Attic in Decatur in support of the Atlanta chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I've used this space in the past to write about this cause and how important it is, and we were pleased to participate again this year.

As an added bonus this year, AFSP and the folks at the Attic teamed up to record the event, and the masters were passed along to me for editing. The bad news is, I've been really busy with all sorts of things, and I've only edited about half the performances. But the good news is, we were the first act and I started at the beginning. So our songs were among the first ones I finished. So while I work on the rest of the shows, I'm posting a link here to download the MP3 of our performance of "She Walked Away" from Eddie's Attic last month.

Enjoy!

Download She Walked Away

Promotion

I suck at promoting my own music. Always have. In fact, sometimes I think I have a self-sabotage thing going on.

Way back in college, me and some friends had a band called "Fits of Rage." We did not suck. In fact, given the mid-eighties college scene, we were pretty good. And with a little ambition, we might have done a thing or two. We kicked around and shared stages with kids who went on to play in very successful bands. And our drummer, Rob, was always sitting in with the best musicians and toured with some top acts after the F.O.R days. There were always some small-time industry people around, and folks would approach us after shows to talk about recording and that sort of thing. But we never even made a demo. We didn't return phone calls; we didn't re-print t-shirts when ours sold out; eventually, we petered out and went our separate ways.

In the mid-nineties, my folky acoustic group made a lo-fi recording in my apartment and got it on the air at the local college station. We gigged regularly in Athens and Atlanta, and we even got some decent press. The Atlanta Journal did a feature on open mike shows one night when we happened to play. The writer raved that we "gripped the audience with [our] tight . . . set"; while an Athens paper did an interview feature on the band, complete with photo layout and song (mis-)quotes. We drew crowds at the likes of Decatur's Eddie's Attic and Atlanta's Red Light Cafe, and people we didn't know knew who we were. So how did we capitalize on this momentum? We stopped playing in Athens altogether, cut back on the number of dates we played generally, and changed our name. How's that for guerilla marketing!?

So it should come as no surprise that in the age of the Interwebs, I have MyBook, SpaceFace, LiveBlogz, Twiggles, and all the rest, but I don't use these technologies for anything like a coordinated "promotional strategy." I have, however, started using a single tool to coordinate mailing list, press kit stuff, music downloads, and those sorts of things. It's called Reverb Nation, and it integrates with this page, with Facebook, and other services. I've had the account for some time, but they've been improving the service over the last year, and I've come to believe that the convenience of the thing outweighs my instinct to try to make everything "do it yourself" (an instinct that results in half-completed and abandoned projects).

So drop by the "Patrick and Shelle Bryant" profile on Reverb Nation and check out the downloads and the "be a fan" widget and whatever else is there. I'll be glad you did!

Nothing to Report

It's been over two months since my last post, and I don't think anything of musical note has happened since then. Oh, my mom gave us a Yamaha keyboard for Christmas. That's been fun. And I've touched base with our producer about getting the CD wrapped up. I have some great musicians lined up to play, but I still don't have drummer. The real challenge is the budget: we don't have one.

While I'm ruminating about nothing in particular, I'll brag about my kids. Their school had its annual "Peace Celebration" this weekend. Each class prepares and sings a song about peace in honor of MLK. Because it's Montessori, my boys (11 and 7) are in the same class. They sang "Dona Nobis Pacem," first in unison, then in a round. It was good. But the really amazing thing was, My 11-year-old son directed the class rather than the teacher. She had assigned him, along with a younger student, to learn the piece, teach it to the class, and conduct all the rehearsals. So when it came time for the performance she asked him to direct that as well. Needless to say, we were rather proud. And his little brother did a great job of singing too!

In the course of this rambling, I've thought of some actual things I want to write about. Which was sort of the point. So here's hoping I'll get off my duff and get back to being a music blogger this year!

-pb