While I have not made the kind of sales that would support a growing family, I’m heading in that direction. Um, the sales, not the growing family. Mine is grown thanks to my last career. I have much to learn but I do learning gratefully.

Here are several reasons to love being an indie musician at this time: We are in the last days of albums as we have known them my entire life. I’m at a fantastic advantage now to produce one song at a time and sell downloads. I don’t have to try to fill a disc with enough songs to make the price worthwhile for the consumer. The consumer can buy the songs they like and not worry about a few clunkers that are just filling space. I can still bundle digital collections as I see fit and sell them as a package or one at a time. So concept albums are not dead. Just different. I can even put a song or two on a mini disk and have my business card printed on it. More than likely, though, it’ll be a flash drive. Or the successor to the flash drive. What might that be? A holographic image projected from my iPhone? I can do my own demographic studies and reach the people on the web who are likely to like me. I don’t, as the big labels do, have to dictate what I think you will like. I can tour or not tour. Even if I stay in one place, I can use the web to find my true fans and bring them to me. I can have a life other than that as a full time musician. I can have experiences to write about that exist outside my studio. And the list will grow as time goes on.

Everything changes but there are still only 12 notes to make all those songs to come. This inspires a possible Onion headline: Every combination of twelve notes having been used, musicians recycle. Listen to this week’s top ten nursery rhyme downloads.

What is the good news? Music sales has grown in 2011 for the first time since 2004! And a big thank you to Adele because she is one of the biggest reasons that music sales were up for the first time in a long time! “‘Adele became the first artist to go double-platinum on iTunes — while her massive breakthrough, 21, helped goose digital and physical sales numbers by collectively topping more than 8 million in 2011 — digital sales were huge. Both unit sales (105 million) and revenue ($1 billion) were up more than 20 percent. Single downloads were up nearly 11 percent to 1.3 million.” That is impressive! I hope this kind of grow continues in 2012.

 I know I will surely concentrate on selling more downloads now and I’ll most likely limit my recording to two or three new songs a year. And you know what? I like it this way. The music biz has changed and I’m embracing it. I’ll make just enough CDs for promotion and for the dinosaurs who still walk among us. And for the rest of the world, there is my 2 for 1 deal!  Buy one download and receive one free!

As a huge thank you to my friends and fans, and of course to encourage folks to support this humble artist, I am offering a 2 for 1 special. Buy any song and I will send you one for free. Not even Walmart has that kind of deal! You get two songs for 99 cents! Most of us download music all the time vie iTunes, Reverbation and CD Baby and so you have your choice of any of these. I have made it super easy, just click here http://www.budbuckley.com/store/ and choose which download option you prefer. Then, enter your email address and I will send you your free download! Thank you! Thank you for your ongoing support and know that every 99 cents is a big deal to me because I prefer not to use fund raising Campaigns. Just want to remain in connection with you. Two cool tunes for less than the price of a candy bar, just for YOU! Enjoy!

So non-competitive me is heavily trolling the internet for new fans and people to listen to me. I’m number one singer songwriter on Reverbnation.com locally. Number 2 in Florida and heading up fast. Number 19 in the US and watch out top ten. All this is lovely, of course. But I need to find my true demographic. Translation: who likes my music enough to buy a download? I’ll sell you a CD if you prefer. They will be collectors items in a few years. It’s all about selling downloads, baby!

I believe I make very good music and I pride myself on taking no shortcuts. Woodstock studios, top producer, engineer and the best studio musicians are essential to me. I don’t want to sit still as I continue to grow artistically. Sometimes I do worry if I don’t continue being the internet whore, my music is gonna just stay in bed and die! So of course I am going to get a bit promotional for a minute! Especially so I can find the people who like my music and want to listen to it on a regular basis, in their car, working out, enjoying their cup of joe. If you are up for supporting my efforts you could just use my tune widget on the right or if you want to be a super friend and fan, e-mail this widget url to your friends and recommend they give it a listen:
http://reverbnation.com/tunepak/3503918

This rocket is gonna blast off sooner or later. You’ll be happy to brag you were there in the beginning and got a widow seat.

My song writing partner and drummer when I do the band thing is Jax Resto. You can see her in the Bowie Tribute videos above. One look at her and you will want to know her secret. But pictures only tell half the story. Jax has astounding energy and spirit. She is a former professional dancer and circus aerialist with Ringling Brothers. When I learned that she was married to the human canon ball during those years, I figured she must have been the gun powder.  She is a first rate drummer, lyricist and novelist. On top of this and her massage business, she is a black belt Tai Kwan Do instructor.

Here’s what she told me when I asked her how she stays fit enough to endure the extra rigors of a gigging musician/songwriter:

“For me it’s about consistency. It’s much easier to maintain than get back
in shape. I don’t have any special diet, really. I just try not to eat late
at night. I do martial arts 3 times a week and try to run about 3 miles 3
times a week. If I can’t fit running into my day, I try to do something
even if it’s just a few minutes on the total gym. Then at night, I try to
work in a set of pushups with my son before bed. Of course there are always
the mean workouts on the drums . And I never buy a larger size pair of
jeans.”

I thought the last bit about the jeans was inJEANious!

And what about meditation/mindfulness? Well, I believe this is also critical to our overall well-being and you don’t have to sit in a meditation for an hour to get the results. Even just a few minutes (around 15) a day of being still and in silence can do wonders.  But I’ve been using a binaural sound system called Holosync for nearly a year now and it’s been wonderful. I highly recommend it. Comment if you want to know more.

I know the same self-care issue is valid for other professions too. Show business adds extra pressure. There are countless great looking stars with average talent. Probably as many average looking stars with wonderful talent. Being someplace in the middle,  I’m just gonna continue to stay fit.  And practice. Always practice.

An abused body and mind can only rock the casbah so many times.  The Kinks had it right when they sang “Motorway food is the worst in the world.” That stuff will kill you if you’re not careful. The other contributing, uh, habits, musicians are exposed to combined with little sleep and no real exercise beyond lifting a guitar or speaker cabinet can push a BigMac body to the limit. Drowning on fast food vomit during a chemical sleep is such an inglorious way to go.

To be truthful, my own health habits have run in cycles over the years.  I take turns binging on slothfulness /careless eating and then swing to workout mania /vegetarian mindfulness. I’ve been doing much more of the latter in recent years.  I gig two to four times a week in my local area and I’m exposed to a lot of rich food that is excellent quality but diet crushing.  There is also the offered alcohol payoff which I have no problem with since I don’t drink and never have. I know that’s unusual but I can more than make up for the damage free booze can cause with accepting amazing and amazingly rich dinners at the fine restaurants I perform in. It’s very hard to say no to a culinary genius after a late gig. The owner/chef in my regular weekend gigs is Ed Glennen, of Back Eddy Bistro, who was the personal chef to Neil Young, Jimmy Buffett, Rupert Murdock, Roy Schemer, and other luminaries. This dude cooks his ass off! And his wife, Ally, makes astounding desserts.  I am challenged every minute of every weekend to keep the damage to my waistline minimal. That demands a veggie diet the rest of the week and so juicing, followed by just veggies has replaced the heavy foods with better results. I have short arms. I need to be able to reach the guitar strings without a protruding gut pushing them even further away from me. You know what I mean?

Individualized Instruction

Guitar teaching is a special joy for different reasons.  It allows me to teach in a way that was impossible with a class of 30 plus kids of 30 different abilities, learning styles and interests.  The claim of individualized instruction in a regular classroom is mostly wishful thinking.  There are moments of it happening but the system pretty much demands that you try to teach to the middle. Now I get to spend a large portion of each hour on alert for individual learning styles. You unlock that and you are half way home. The rest of the way is paved with the student’s own determination to learn.

Brain Damaged

The first huge discovery I made as a young classroom teacher is that you can become very effective at teaching things you struggle with.  Especially with students who struggle in the same way. Spelling has always been a problem with me. I lack visual memory. A childhood brain injury but that’s another story. I was taught by rote. Very ineffective for my disability. So I taught spelling with rules. A lot of English actually follows them. And a lot is helplessly stupid. Which makes people like me seem stupid.  I was pretty good at taking the onus of stupidity off of struggling students.

So with guitar teaching, I like to start with teaching a song the student wants to learn. I change the key to avoid the hardest chords. I show little tricks about the most efficient way to finger the chords to get to the next one. In the process, I learn a lot about how each one learns.  Then I have something to work with.

Music for the Illiterate

I’ve run into music teachers along the way and music majors who lack the ability to see that there are talented people who can not learn to read music or understand it the way they do. As if people like The Beatles never happened.  I was told that Chet Atkins responded this way when asked if he could read music: “Yeah but not enough to fuck up my guitar playing.”  Whether that’s an accurate quote or not, it says a lot about the art versus the science.  Clearly in the history of human experience with music, there are many ways to become a great artist. And sadly, just as many ways to stifle artistic growth.  Our minds were not all cut from the same mold.

A desperate politician said recently that his rival is a snob for wanting everybody to go to college.  He would have me agreeing with him had he said that there are many kinds of intelligence. That we can all be educated in one way or another but that working hard is a virtue regardless of the kind or style of work.  This is a person I could never support for a variety of other issues but he clumsily hinted at a problem we have in this country about our perception of education.

I’m constantly learning things about my own best way to learn.  I think it’s a sliding scale. I think my ability to learn rests on many changing factors. This must be true of everybody else to some degree.

• How much sleep have I had?
• What chemicals are coursing through me?
• What have I been eating and drinking?
• What’s been on my mind lately?
• What’s the weather like?
• What is my energy level?
• Do I feel this material I’m studying is really important to me?
• How much pressure am I under to learn it?
• Will I disappoint somebody if I don’t learn it?
• Exactly how anxious am I about learning this?
• What experience have I had that I can relate this to?

Is there anybody out there who knows someone who actually has photographic memory? Not just sorta but the real deal? Is that person totally normal otherwise? Must perfect learning be contingent upon giving up some other aspect or our human-ness?

What I’ve learned is that the more I write, the more song writing ideas I come up with. Watch this space for songs about perceived intelligence or being too smart or disappointment or……

Your support truly is immeasurable. And did you know that your fanship is even more critical to those of us who are indie artists? There are two kinds of music today. Top 40 that is made to fit a computer algorithm that decides what you must like. That’s the first kind. Then there is indie music that comes from the heart and soul of a single individual or a band. We care nothing for the record companies and what they think you want and need. We care about what you do actually want and need and hope that what we are creating not only is beautiful to us, but to you as well. I do watch numbers, of course…we all do. I am aware of how more fans can rank me number 1 indie artists for my area. I can’t deny paying attention to those things. Though I felt it was important to communicate with all of you that while I am aware of that, my livelihood really is centered around creating art for those who enjoy my music.

Next time you wonder if you should fan one of us indie artists or not, remember how much of a service you are doing to the artistic community and know that even though the industry has changed so much and so much of it is about online activity, we care about you, we need you, and we want to be able to share our passion with you. Yes, click that like button and that share button and just know, you are helping an indie artist follow their love! Go ahead…click away!

A Curse on Facebook

Some of my fellow musicians and I have found out too late that it would make better sense to have a personal Facebook Page different from our Fan Page.  Facebook doesn’t let you change your name after you have 100 fans or friends.  Brilliant, huh? FB also suggests friends to me and then sends me a warning for trying to friend them. Thanks. May your endless eight-legged algorithms turn inward and declare themselves spamalicious. And then digest and excrete themselves into whatever web they were born on.  Hmm, that’d make a pretty good T-shirt. Need more graphics than text, though. Got that picture in your head? Sorry.

MySpace Whores

There are still way too many of us in the biz who are thinking and behaving like MySpace whores. That’s so 5 years ago.  “Hey check out my song!”   Yeah, that’s enticing.  Finding better ways to spread my music without spreading irritation is like creating a friendly virus. Like sneezing on an airplane and expecting everyone to smile and yell, “Thanks! Great Stuff!”  We who peruse the web or even live on it, are overwhelmed with requests. It’s getting worse than network TV. Except we have a spam button.

I Love You, Single Ladies!

I know Valentine’s Day is a sticky web of expectations and regrets. I like to shun such Hallmark days.  But ignoring this one is far too risky.  I’d like to write a love song to all the single ladies who cringe at the onslaught of VD. Um, the holiday, not the disease. And perhaps I will. It’s very painful for me to know I have dear friends who don’t have the love that I do.  I wish I could fix that. But it’s a perilous pursuit. Nobody loves a yenta with poor judgement. Or would I be a yento? Where’s a Yiddish dictionary when you need one?

But I did write a song for Cathy, my wife and best friend.  I have no chance of ever saying all that should be said about this amazing lady and what she brings to my life. So anything I say or write or sing is part empty. I hope one day the collection of my efforts will scratch a bit below the surface of what she is to me.  But too much is kind of spammy, isn’t it?

Digital Box Set

If you want to know which of my songs are from the Cathy collection, here they are:

• Can’t Leave My Mind
• Tattoo
• Move Me
• Sit On The Wind
• Had To Pretend
• I Need
• Safe In My Dreams

All of the above can be heard on my tune widget at the right of the page or at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/budbuckley  These are love songs that you may want to buy for your loved one or you may just wish somebody would buy one for you.  Give me their email and I’ll let them know. Honest.

I have songs from a first CD “Feel My Love” that I don’t publicize because I prefer the performance and production of the last three CDs so much more. You can find it on the same CDBaby link if you are curious and you enjoy train wrecks.

But here are the words for Cathy’s new Valentine song:

Everyday Sweetheart      ©Bud Buckley 2012

With My Everyday Sweetheart, I go right to the neat part
But that’s everything she has so I stay  busy
She gives me smiles, I feel through the miles
Keeping up with her can make me  dizzy

Loved her right from the  start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start
Loved her right from the start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start

You’ll never see her in lipstick or powder
Her natural beauty speaks much louder
One look and you’d never  doubt her

With My Everyday Sweetheart, I go right to the neat part
But that’s everything she has so I stay  busy
She gives me smiles, I feel through the miles
Keeping up with here can make me  dizzy

Loved her right from the  start,  my everyday  sweetheart
Loved her right from the start
Loved her right from the start,  my everyday  sweetheart