So here’s the story, I think. I was filming and traveling all last week – and I got kicked off FB. I made a FB page called PAnon which was a parody of the QAnon movement – please please FB don’t take down this page too – I’m just trying to explain what I think happened here. It was funny for a minute – and then not so funny. All my FB content has been taken down permanently. Oh man, do I have to be a wise-ass all the time?
It’s a pain because Egg Eaters have a show this Saturday night at Seven Sisters Tap Room Black Mountain, NC at 7pm – with the amazing Amber Grace Joyner – and FB really is a good way to post an event and get the word out. Please wear a mask and socially distance – we love music venues and we want them to stay open.
I will now try to fix my karma: people ask me about booking and so this is my guarded insight into booking a show. Be very real. Be very real in creating new and interesting music, that really reflects your inner light or your inner darkness. Take your heart out and show it. Be very real when you play a show – and be grateful to the booker and the sound guy. Be very real with the other bands – scream and shout and dance and really get into their shows. Be more than words. However you spend your time shows exactly what you value. Go out to other shows. Be real. Fall in love with other bands. Adore another band’s music. Tell them. Fall in love with the music venues. Make your favorite experience a night at a small music venue watching loud bands. Bring your friends. The people who run the underground music venues do this because they are real. They really love music. They have dedicated their life to this music. They curate an authentic sound of this underground art. If you are doing the same then you will be in the same revolution. Your relationships with other bands and with music venues will be real – and then it will be easy to book shows.
I want to take a step back for a moment. I work in video/film. I have watched very successful reporters and directors charm an interviewee and then when they get the answer or soundbite – then they are done. I try to love everyone I film. I think every story is the coolest. Every life is an amazing narrative. I try to really connect and raise them up as heroes. We, Holy Crap Records Podcast and our crew and friends, we really try to be authentic with every piece of music we play. We fall in love with your songs every week. It is October and the nights are getting darker. Pandemic levels are rising again. It is hard to be real and vulnerable now. But now is the time to be smart and go out to those live shows and wear masks and socially distance and tip your music venue. Now is the time to be real with your friends. To tell the other bands and musicians in the scene how much you adore them – and not fake but real. Now is the time to be real with the music we create. What we do know will be remembered. Give and give and give until it bleeds.

I’d been writing a weekly blog about seeing how far I could take the Egg Eaters, make them famous, manipulate the levers of power, all the ways to be charming and pushy and brave and game the system. Radio. Label. Press. It kind of worked. But it didn’t work. On February 28th of this year I wrote a blog post labelled “band mismanagement.” A lesson in being domineering. Then everything closed down. Music venues. Recording studios. Darkness descended. It hasn’t been a pleasant time. I have lost friends and I have witnessed friends fall apart. We lost someone recently. I didn’t sleep. Each night I waited for dawn in a stiff plank of anxiety, searching for something to push against, something to fight. I don’t know – searching for a metaphor – whether music was at the bottom of the well or that music is the rope that leads back up into the light. I do know that I have been making remote music, sneaking into dark basement jams, managing online music shows, making some porch music, listening and listening, talking and talking, texting and texting about music. It has taken on a greater importance. A lot of collaborations. And there is no better feeling than to collaborate with someone, share a song with someone, and have them respond through their art. That is like becoming brothers. I don’t like the weight necessarily. That music can lift me so high, laughing as I play – and then other moments when I feel excluded… I am sure it is not just me. I try to let everyone know, who shares music with me, who collaborates, that everything is gentle and kind and easy. A phoenix is the bird that rises from the ashes. A crow, a raven, is the bird that feeds on carrion, that spiritually can travel between the underworld and our world, that can fly into the darkness and return to the light.
Oh hell – this post went dark – and then stayed dark. I just want to write dance music. Nothing is worth writing unless you can dance to it. So how do you do it? How do you write dance music?