now i\'m confused... what\'s 2006 gonna be?
oddly enough, the year of the harmonizing midget clowns. go figure...
while i agree with leith\'s frustrations (as i, too, would like more shows i don\'t have to travel multiple states for) what i was noticing the other day, was this~ go back to the archive and listen to one of the january or february shows, then listen to, say, 11/17 stone church. while they may not have toured much or brought in a huge new fan base, their playing has leapt exponentially. the sheer power of what they are doing is most noticable. the size and depth of the songs wasn\'t nearly as full even 11 months ago. what they\'ve learned over this year has been irreplaceable.
now, do they need to get on the road? obviously. they need to go melt those faces in the midwest, then get back to them while the memory is still strong, as opposed to making them wait 9 or 10 months in-between shows. they need to continue to shore up their ne base, but honestly the uncharted regions are where they need to focus. and this is nothing that the band doesn\'t know.
after the puppethouse, tim looked at jill and i and asked, humbly, "what more do we need to do?" at the time, i think i suggested traveling pole dancers, but they know what they need to do. tour. a bunch. get out on the road for a year/year and a half coming home only to recharge the batteries and get clean socks. but let me ask you this~ Would you be willing to quit your job, leave your significant other for months in a row, just to play music to 15 people every night? 15 people who don\'t provide enough money to pay for full meals, full gas tanks and new strings???
the problem is that their ability level far outreaches their drawing level. cause those 15 people will be destroyed, if in fact they like an aural pummeling with a lot of changes in songs they don\'t know. certainly some will, but you\'ve seen how the crowd falls off at setbreak at local shows, so what about the tuesday night gig in east tuscaloosa where 6 people show up, but 4 of them have to leave early?? that\'s a daunting prospect, to be sure.
so what do you do about it? well, i\'d say they\'ve made some good choices and some not as good. start playing fests. they were well recieved at the few they played this year, which should increase the number they play next. personally, i\'d try to tour from fest to fest, playing weekday gigs at whatever college towns are along the way. but that\'s just me. those fests gave them some word of mouth. a poor decision (that they didn\'t have much control over, as they were still looking for/settling on a booking agency) was not to take that moe.down/10k lakes buzz higher with a non-stop fall/early winter tour. i like that they went out and played those midwest dates, showed that there are still folks interested at what they heard at 10k, but if they\'re gonna go out, more than 4 gigs should be attempted. but hey, how do we know that those gigs weren\'t introductions of the band (and its style & drawing power) to club owners in the midwest? now that they\'ve done fairly decently they can be booked with more confidence next year. especially since most places have the rest of this year already booked.
in an ultimatum mentality, jordan needs to quit his job, ron needs to ignore his wife and timmy and ad need to learn automechanics and theft prevention real quick. then go on the road until the world is sufficiently dominated. but even in this fantasy, there\'s no mention of how they are to afford said road trip. and that\'s what it all comes down to - money. there is the plan to start with concentric circles starting at your base and gradually expanding your playing area, there\'s the thought that you just go out and hit the road, there\'s the idea of sporadic, quick runs to specific venues. whichever one th band goes with will most likely be the one that enables them to get from one gig to the next. so, aside from one of us winning the lottery and bank rolling the entire band, the decisions that he band is making in the real world are a hell of a lot more difficult and diffuse than us sitting around hypothesizing about what they "need" to be, or not be, doing. its very easy to say \'get thee on the road, men\', but just try imagining what it would take for you, alone, to do a five week road trip on a musician\'s budget, then add in five more guys and equipment. now imagine you have to perform at the breakfast\'s level most of those nights, after driving for 8 or 10 hours on an empty tank. gets kinda daunting and complicated, don\'t it?!
I will continue to support them by sending out freebies and talking them up. i will continue to make every attempt to see them and buy some merch every time. (unless they\'re playing the webster, but that\'s another bitch-thread
) and i will continue to support them however i can. but its far beyond me to know every intricacy involved in these men\'s lives and try to dictate their band\'s future plans. that\'s up to them.
