Invitation Only

People ask me "d'you ever play out anymore?" or "what's happening with your music?" or similar daggers to the heart. I tell them, "these days we really only play when we're asked." The truth is, practicing and playing are great fun and don't intrude too much on our very busy three kid/two career life. But the work of promoting music is a different story altogether! emailing, calling, visiting venues and asking if we can play there, and then promoting shows, printing and hanging posters, blogging, sending email, and all that to get people through the door. Now that's a lot of work! I'll venture it's virtually impossible to successfully write music, play and record music, and promote music while holding down a demanding job and being even remotely attentive as a husband and father. But I could be wrong: maybe I'm just lousy at it!

Unwilling to give up music (or our family or the means of providing for our family), Shelle and I have settled on a fairly meager compromise: when an opportunity to play comes along, we take it! But we rarely seek out opportunities. I have my guitar and a drumset and my son's upright bass sitting in our bedroom to remind me I'm a musician, and we'll be playing a lunchtime show at the Druid Hills Artist Market in April. But we don't have a plan beyond that. I guess we'll just take it as it comes!