Card Business

This last week I started handing out a new set of cards to a select few people. These are for my personal sound and music business. Everything is still in “soft launch” mode (even the card design is provisional). In a week or so I’ll make a bigger announcement with more details.

In a way this is a follow-up to the post I wrote last month on gifts and business cards. Those nice Moo Cards are still my social object of choice for introductions in most situations. Giving people the choice of an image to take with them is a mutually rewarding experience.

But, these new cards and, dare I say it, the brand they carry are the logical extension of the last six years of musical endeavour. I’m cautiously optimistic about where this is all heading. It makes more sense now to put a lot more work out in the open and to pitch more directly for new opportunities.

Of course, that also implies a lot more focus, fewer favours and a bit more “brutal truth,” when explaining what I will and will not do.

It also means, for those of you that have been waiting a while to see this, the release is much closer for…

That’s only my draft artwork at this stage. More importantly I have an assembled list of songs and a full mixing direction. I’ve engaged a mastering engineer, commissioned an essay for the album booklet, drafted a photo collection for the bonus material, developed an offer page and low-key marketing/distribution plan and will be sitting for a photo-shoot this week. Amazingly, this big, lumbering, sometimes overwhelming project is finally coming to fruition.

OK, so that might not seem so amazing to new readers here. But, if you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know that putting music under my own name has been quite a journey, culturally, emotionally and spiritually. Some bad musical experiences early on really knocked my confidence and I got into the pattern of being excellent under someone else’s name.

Things have changed now (about time I can hear some of you cry) and interestingly enough, I don’t just feel more freedom, but also the added responsibility has made me more humble about my limitations and how much I still have to learn about music and music-making.