10.27.08 Advent Conspiracy

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10.27.08 How Do I Get A Record Deal?

Every college campus has at least one guy or girl who wants to be a professional artist.  They usually find me after the show and ask me how it’s done.

After a short conversation it’s clear what they really want to know: How do I get a record deal?

If that’s your question, let me save you a trip to my concert - here’s the answer:  Christian record labels (labels making music primarily for a Christian audience) say they can no longer afford to sign artists who might succeed.  So, these days, you’ll have to “succeed” on your own before a label will sign you.

That means you’ll have to record an album (or single songs) and sell a lot of them on your own.  You’ll have to build an e-mail list, a large following on facebook and/or myspace and/or your blog on your own.  You’ll have to get gigs, lots of them, on your own.  In short, if you can generate big enough numbers (of units sold, fans won, gigs booked) on your own, you’ll have no problem getting a record deal.  The labels will find you.

But…

If you can generate big numbers on your own why do you want a record deal?

There are good answers to that question.  For instance, maybe you really don’t like doing everything on your own, including paying the marketing and recording bills.  Maybe you don’t want to read every Seth Godin book out there and learn how to market and promote your wares.

Maybe you believe a record label can generate even bigger numbers than you did on your own.

Maybe you need the affirmation of awards and press coverage.

Maybe you want to get your music out to as many middle-aged white Christian conservative soccer moms as possible and you realize a label promoting your songs to Christian radio stations is the surest way to do that.  Maybe.

Or maybe you’re just fine doing the work yourself, talking to your fans on-line, playing in small venues, never winning a Grammy, never being on a magazine cover.  So why do you want a record deal?

10.25.08 Buyer’s Remorse

I remember my mom taking me shopping when I was in middle school.  She’d find stuff she thought was “cute,” I’d try it on, we’d like how I looked and then I’d tell her not to buy any of it.

Back then money was a little tight in our house.  Mom didn’t know I knew it but I did.  And there was no way I was gonna let her buy me clothes I didn’t need with money she didn’t have.

I always lost those battles - mom would put her foot down, pull out her department store credit card and I’d soon be walking around in new white shoes and crisp blue jeans.  And I’d feel awful for a few days.

It comes and goes but I still struggle with buyer’s remorse.  The higher the price tag, the worse the symptoms.  In my closet, stuffed in a corner, is a small stack of tags and receipts - most of them too old to even be useful.  They’re my secret safety net, my security blanket.  I figure if the remorse doesn’t go away or God appears to me in a vision and tells me to take those guitar picks and socks back, I can grab my receipts and go on a returning spree.  Just knowing I have that option gets me through the days just after a purchase.

In our attic - again, in a corner - are the boxes of my first laptop, the video camera we bought our first year of marriage and a battery charger I sold in a garage sale years ago.  I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with this, but I have more boxes for stuff than I have stuff - originally stored away just in case a return became necessary.

Yesterday, I spent just over $1000.  I bought a high end HD camera - the kind some indie film makers use.  I did lots of research.  Professional film guys say it’s the best bang for the buck.  Numerous reviewers give it their highest rating. And while I know it’ll be put to good use and save hundreds of lives eventually, but I still can’t stop feeling awful about it.  Once again I’m standing in Dillards arguing about whether I really needed those shoes...I mean that camera.

And what’s worse?  Recording one song costs more than that camera.  A lot more. I may need therapy before this month is over.

Anybody else have this problem?  How do you deal with it?

10.24.08 Help The Church.  Vote For A Madman.

Today, I received the millionth e-mail letting me know that if So-and-so gets elected president of the United States dogs will start sleeping with cats, Christianity will crumble, and the end of the world will begin.

All this kind of rhetoric does is make me want to blog about nothing but church history from now until election day.  But I’ll resist that urge and instead tell you only one story.  It’s about this guy named Nero - you may have heard of him.  He was a bit of a jerk, not real fond of Christians, with some anger issues.

Nero did some sick stuff like stick Christians on poles, jab those poles into his lawn and light the bodies on fire so he could have a little light to walk by in the evening. While Nero reigned Christianity didn’t crumble and the world didn’t end.

I understand wanting to vote for someone under whom Christianity would flourish.  I get that.  Let me think about who that might be for a second.  OK, well, because of what history teaches us about the conditions under which Christianity thrives you might want to vote for a guy or girl who will lock up our churches, strip us of our freedoms, imprison us for praying, and is a bit of a psychotic pyromaniac.  That’s the kind of guy whose intolerance and brutality helped turn a Jewish cult into a major world religion.

God and His Church have never needed a president’s or Caesar’s support in order to survive.  But we’re not the first nation and generation to forget this.  Isaiah wrote to the Jews while they were despairing in captivity:

Do you not know? Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

[God] sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 44

10.22.08 The Brilliant Guy I Met Tonight

Tonight, after the show, I met a brilliant guy.  Brilliant for two reasons.

First, when I asked him what he was studying at the University of Florida, he told me he wasn’t in school at all.  Why is that brilliant?  Well, the show was at the weekly meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and this brilliant single guy attends that meeting regularly.  I can think of no better place for a guy i his early twenties to meet a girl in her early twenties than a University, and who says you have to pay a University thousands of dollars in order to reap the, um, social benefits of being at one?

Secondly, did I mention the brilliant guy isn’t going to school at all?  That’s not brilliant on its own but I think it is when said guy doesn’t have a good reason to.  You see, this guy gave college the good old, um, college try and then wisely realized that he was going to school (and paying a bunch of cash to do so) pretty much only because he was expected to.  It’s what you do next when you’re a middle class white kid with a high school diploma.  But this brilliant guy bailed on that and decided to work instead while he figures out what he loves enough to study hard and what God might have actually made him for besides making enough cash to pay the bills.  And, like I said, he goes to all those meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Brilliant, man.  Just brilliant.

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Also, last night and tonight combined, students at the University of Florida sponsored 56 kids.  Also brilliant.