This past Friday I was back in the recording studio. As those of you who read my post on my first studio day remember, we initially had recorded guitar for a bunch of tracks, and then experimented at the end with recording live – guitar and vocal together. Even though that was by necessity rough, we liked the way it turned out, and so decided to try recording for real that way The big downside with recording guitar and vocal together is that it limits the extent to which you can easily “fix” or “patch”…

My second mentoring session at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference was with Mary Lou Troy. Although she offered several different topics on which to mentor, one of them was “writing artist bios.” My music bio needs updating in a general sense, but I also had some specific issues I wanted to focus on From the beginning of my music career I made an effort to keep my music life separate from my academic life – plenty of people in the academic world didn’t know I was a musician, and even fewer…

I’m at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) conference this week, and one of opportunities is to sign up to meet with mentors. I had my first mentoring session right after I’d checked in. I’d picked Rorie Kelly as a mentor, in part because one of the things she’d mentioned was vocal care and health, and that seemed like a worthwhile topic, especially as I’m embarking on a recording process in which the quality of my vocals is on my mind It was a helpful conversation. There was no major new…

Those of you who have been around for awhile know that I’ve been gearing up to record my third CD for an extremely long time. I was initially ready about three and a half years ago, but discovered that my previous producer/engineer had stopped producing So I set about to find another producer and, after a long search, just over two years ago settled on someone with a big name and big reputation who agreed to work with me. But when we got down to the specifics of how the recording process would work,…

Though none of us would admit it, I suspect in some ways all of us who do that are silently hoping that our songwriting heroes will hear our songs and be instantly impressed with our brilliance. I’d like to think that I’m past that fantasy, but I saw it happen today for someone else. And it most certainly did not happen for me Wednesday in Richard Shindell’s class I shared my song Slide Guitar, because we were talking about sparse songs, and it’s among my most sparse. I generally try only to offer…

A quick post about my open stage performance at song school. There are 180 students here and not enough performance slots for the nightly open stage for everyone so getting in is a lottery. This year I didn’t make it in initially, but I was second on the waitlist, and as people with second thoughts withdrew they filled slots. So ended up with one Wednesday night Luckily (unlike some people who get their slots at the last minute if someone who doesn’t show up at the appointed time) I knew from Monday…

If I had a major (or maybe an advisor) at Song School this year, it would be Richard Shindell. He’s one of the guest songwriting instructors this year, and he also taught a guitar accompaniment workshop today, and I’ve taken three classes with him so far in two days of Song School He has been one of my favorite songwriters for a long time; his narrative songs, often written from perspectives or about stories that aren’t his own, are the kinds of songs I aspire to write. I wasn’t sure how his classes…

I’m back at the Rocky Mountain Song School. There’s something magical about this place; I arrived and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I suspect there will be a bunch of blog posts as I try to process, and hang onto, everything I’m learning here For the first session I went to one about Making a Wholehearted Music Career, with Terri and Ellis Delaney, and Val Denn. My music career has been nothing if not halfhearted lately, and I thought it might be a way to sneak up on what I actually…

In the second workshop session at NERFA this year I chose the one on crowdfunding. As I contemplate making my next CD, I wanted to do some thinking about whether something like a kickstarter campaign would make sense. I certainly came out of the workshop seeing some real advantages to doing it One of the first take-home messages was that crowdfunding campaigns are about much more than raising money for a project; one of the panelists at some point said that if you’re thinking of it solely for that…

I’m at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) conference. I’m sure I’ll post more existential thoughts on this conference and where I am in my folk career, but for now, I’m going to do my standard reporting on workshops I’ve been to at the conference. In the first panel slot I was interested in four of the panels and ended up going to two (so, no, although a panel on humor and booking would perhaps be useful – and the best way to handle booking – they were actually two separate workshops The humor…