When I was in bands, I promoted the band tirelessly. I didn’t sing all that well, and I wasn’t pretty, which meant that I’d have a “tough row to hoe” if I tried to make it as a solo act. But I could arrange and write, and I could…
Long before I started this blog (about music), I had a page on a Christmas site listing “musings,” which are short articles about our personal reactions to Christmas and related topics. If you’re in the mode for some Christmas readings, check out our FamilyChristmasOnline Musings page. Some musings that I…
Which is more: $17, $170, $1500, or $4000? What’s the difference? $17 is the approximate cost of registering the domain name for your name, your stage name, or your band name now. $170 is the approximate cost of registering your domain name and keeping it registered for ten years, just…
Get someone who reads to look over your lyrics in case you’ve written something that can be taken the wrong way, or which doesn’t make sense. It’s one thing if the lyric is a deliberate pun or inversion of a cliche phrase (like “Head over Feet” or “Hard Day’s Night). …
First of all you should know that I do not consider myself a “banjo player” per se. I am a songwriter/singer who occasionally uses guitar, banjo, bass, dulcimer, or piano to accompany himself and his friends. So if you invite me to bring my banjo to a party or gig,…
If you’ve ever visited the saxophone section of my SchoolOfTheRock.com web page, you’d know that I love writing about vintage saxophones almost as much as I love playing them. I’m also a professional writer and researcher, so when I get a question from a reader, I can usually track down…
When I wrote an article about “short-scale” and travel banjos for the Riverboat Music site, it got me thinking that I would like to have a 5-string that was as portable as my Martin Backpacker travel guitar. My Backpacker is 35″ long and just over 9″ wide at its widest…
When I turned 59, a company I worked for in the 1980s started trying to “buy me out” of the itty bitty pension I accumulated between 1981 and 1984. I explained to the “financial counselor” who kept calling me that I had “done the math” and the value of the…
If you checked my music web page a year ago, you probably wondered if I ever updated it. I’ve been keeping three separate pages about traditional and Americana music updated for years, but I haven’t been nearly as diligent about promoting my own songs. In the last several months, friends…
This is a response to a blog by Country songwriter Shantell Ogden, listing the “hard answers” to the questions that wannabes ask her most often. Her blog is here. I’m not “Country” by nature; I grew up as a folk singer, went into “Jesus music” (before “CCM” all started sounding…