March 9-11 I will be the Musical Guest of Honor at Madicon!

This is, of course, awesome. I am very humbled by the honor and so I am preparing something special. A lot of special somethings, actually. New songs. New instruments. New panel ideas. In every was I can I will show my appreciation.

And going forward this will be my M.O. I will always work to better my live show but for those conventions and venues that offer me something super special like musical guest of honor, I promise to work extra hard to blow your mind.

Tuesdays are lovely. Milo goes to preschool at 11:30 rather than 12:30 so I get 3 1/2 hours of doin' stuff time. Today I camped out at Baltimore Tea and Coffee, drank 2 medium dark roasts, and finished reading through the book. I can't say it's really a polish and I can't say it's really an edit. This first read through was to look for problems and clean up the obvious stuff. I am now convinced that this book is pretty good and fun, but I still have some work to do. Here are the things I need to focus …

We have lives of excuses. For me, looking for reasons not to get things done is just a glance around the room. My 4 year old wants me to be a dog for a while. Christmas shopping isn’t done. One of the dogs chewed up his rope and I should vacuum it. I’ve made very little progress in sorting through my dad’s stuff since he died. I have to do all of this stuff and I will. I also need to work on at least one project a day. Yesterday I read through and reworked three chapters on my book. …

I worked on the book for about two hours last night and came to the conclusion that I must be Robert E. Howard. But, by the time I got home from the coffee shop, I was able to place this revelation into perspective. I was reworking a section that I didn’t have the best memory of. A couple character's that needed some three dimensionalizing were going some place. I wrote it a month ago and remembered it being a little slow or dull. But it wasn’t. It was upbeat, a little funny, and there was …

This is my second year standing on the street in December playing Christmas songs. I think George Carlin said that the best thing to come out of religion was the music and I agree. I love Christmas songs. The old school baby Jesus rocks songs, the 40’s and 50’s crooners, and even that lame George Michael one. But on the street? In December? Now, Maryland is no South Dakota in many ways, but keep in mind that I did live in South Dakota. I remember what real cold is. Forty degrees with no …

I’ve got a cold. Sad me. I also want to, again, blog somewhat regularly. Why do I keep stopping blogging and what makes me think I can follow through now? I do have some excuses. I really thought that Google + would take off. I do think it’s a great service but moving my blog there didn’t pop the way had hoped. I did start writing a weekly column at www.darkcargo.com and I’ll continue with that, saying monumentally interesting things. But now I feel like I have a number of things …

Good is irrelevant, interesting is required.

Being a good songwriter and performer doesn't matter. It's not a bullet point. It's nothing to take pride in. Being good is the bare minimum. If you aren't at least good, get back in your room.

Being the best doesn't matter. There is no best. Trying to be the best is a wast of time and is completely unmeasurable.
 
Being interesting is the only thing that matters. If you are not interesting, you are boring. If you are not interesting, no one will care. Interesting is what turns an amateur into a professional.

In a world where hundreds of bands are putting out good albums, interesting is what matters.

Evolve > extinct. First I wrote songs about being in high school. Then I wrote songs about being in college. I wrote a lot. By the time I graduated from college I had well over 100 songs (most were not so good, but they were there and written). I established myself as a singer/songwriter that wrote about singer/songwriter things. Then I thought I would write songs about ghosts instead. Then I thought I would write about pirates, clones, and monsters. Then I thought I would write about steampunk. I …

On my first album, Singer/Songfighter , there is a song called How Shannon Hoon Died . Shannon Hoon, the singer for 90's band Blind Mellon , died from a drug overdose while on tour for their album Soup . My song captures the bands history from being signed, becoming a hit, and then Hoons death. In the lyrics there are numerous quotes from Blind Mellon songs. My hope was that some Blind Mellon fans would find the song and appreciate it as a sort of farewell from a fan. That didn't happen. If you search …

Darkcargo.com is a cool blog about cool books and other cool stuff.

James Maxey is a cool author of cool books.

This is a darkcargo post about one of James Maxey's books (and a little bit about me.)

My first album is Singer/Songfighter and it is not my favorite album.

I wrote a lot of music in college and in 1999/2000 started and then abandoned my first studio album. Soon after I took many years off.

In 2009 when I started to get serious about music again I knew that I needed to start making albums. To get it done fast I looked backwards and took the 6 most complete songs from the abandoned project.

The result is an album that doesn't quite fit in with my other releases. Nothing about ghosts or scifi subjects. The guitar work is unpolished. The vocals are raw. It is a good representation of what I was doing before I was really serious. And for that, it works as a sort of prehistory.

For some folks, it will be interesting to see how I started, for others it will be a disappointment.

But it is what it is, like it or not, a first album. No apologies.

I am subscribed to quite a few email newsletters for bands (and you should subscribe to mine) because I like the real connection that comes from it. Recently one of these bands sent a message to everyone on their list apologizing for their last album. They didn't say the album could have been better or that it was rushed. They implied, cryptically, that some people didn't like it or there had been some poor reviews. Because of this they sent an email to me (and every other fan on their list) essentially …

As musicians, we have friends and family who will never be fans.

They come to shows but don't have fun.

They buy our albums but don't listen to them.

They visit our websites and don't get it.

Friends and family are important in our lives but they are not the reason we do what we do. And that's cool.

I think a lot about what I should wear onstage. Usually whatever it is betrays my life in the 90's. I sometimes joke that I'm still mourning the death of grunge. There is some truth in that.

I feel like I should be wearing something that reflects the songs I sing but what is that? Should I be dressing like a ghost? Like a steampunk time traveler? Like Godzilla?

I tend to dress onstage the same as I do offstage. Like a grunge leftover. A hoodie and jeans in the winter,a t-shirt and cargo shorts on the summer. I feel like I am missing an opportunity to augment my shows, but you can't say that I'm not being me.

Most of your songs are about

Your girlfriend
Your boyfriend
Your dumb ass thoughts
Your stupid life in high school
Why no one understands you
Why you're awesome

I don't care. Your band is dumb.

As a musician, think about the business of music as often as you think about the music itself. Being an artist is cool. I love to write, perform, and create and if you do the same you know how incredibly satisfying it is when something comes out the way you wanted. Maybe through happy accidents it’s even better. The business of art, in this case music, is for me just as creative and creatively satisfying as writing a good song. If I have prepared a good show or have recorded a whole bunch of great …

I just got back from RavenCon, my 4th scifi convention. This means I now know everything about everything so here is my first four con round up. CapClave October 2010 A great first con experience. A literary focus, I left with a pile of books. The folks that came to see me play were very attentive. Great listeners and I met some very cool people. Farpoint February 2011 A media con, I watched Tahmo pennikot get attacked by a 3yr old dressed as a dragon. It was very welcoming. A couple people described the …

I’ve never been to SXSW. I’ve never seriously thought about going.

I like festivals and conventions. I like large throngs of people milling about.

SXSW seems like a huge waste of time and energy.  A city pretending to be a clown car.  A gathering of the unprepared hoping to be discovered.  Lots of beer? I bet. Lots of noise? Sure thing. Meaningful connections? I am doubtful.

I’m looking forward to my future conventions and festivals where I can meet people, have conversations, and get to know them.

Here is my summary of 5 weeks on the “slow-carb” diet as outlined in the book “The 4-Hour Body” by Tim Ferriss. The diet claims that if my body fat percentage is up there, I can lose quite a bit of weight with virtually no exercise, simply with diet change. Here is my summary of the diet. While the book does recommend some yoga-like stretching exercises, I have purposefully not gone to the gym or done any serious exercise to see whether this worked. Did it? As of this writing …

The Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center just announced their Community Supported Arts Program. This is awesome for many reasons and chief among them because I am in it. And so are these other guys.   Mark Burrier Michael Douglas Jones Lisa Kovatch Jan McIntyre Lamb Kathryn Paul Calvin Edward Ramsburg David Vogin Read more about it and maybe buy a share here . This from the press release. Nine artists were selected to create a series of 25 new works. Each artist receives a stipend to assist in …

Ghost songs. Monster songs. Superhero songs. Space travel songs. And now steampunk songs? One of the upsides of playing the kind of music I play is that it is the kind of thing that thousands of people are looking for. How many people write songs about H.P. Lovecraft? Most folks that read sci-fi books, watch sci-fi movies, and comic books and TV shows and table-top RPGs, they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to music. There are some cool steampunk bands (Abney Park comes to mind) but …

I made 4 resolutions this year and thought that I would put them here and talk about how it's going. My philosophy with resolutions and goals is that they should be small, achievable steps on the way to big goals. They should also be things that you have direct control over. So, my big goal is to lose 15 pounds and keep it off. It's doable but if that were a goal it would be too vague so here are my small steps on the way to 15 pounds. 1) No sweet snacks after 7pm. It's unrealistic for me to not snack at …

Soundtracks for novels are still rare, but author James Maxey and musician Jonah Knight are working to change that. Maxey, best known for his Dragon Age series, and Knight, a Paranormal Modern Folk singer, met at Capclave 2010, a science fiction convention, and became fans of each other’s work. After a few weeks of correspondence, the two decided to collaborate. In January, Knight will be releasing a collection of songs based on Maxey’s novel Nobody Gets The Girl. Nobody was originally …

This morning I was notified by Tweet that I won the Wave 2 CyberPR Music Success In 9 Weeks Challenge. Remember when I was writing 5 Successes every day? This is that. First of all, thank you so much to http://arielpublicity.com/ for running the challenge and offering excellent advice. Special thanks to Carla Lynn Hall for her work as the moderator of the program. Her advice and support were wonderful. So, yes I won some incredible stuff that I have been dreaming about for a few years, but more than …

Two years or so ago I heard an interview with Tom Jackson on the CDBaby DIY Podcast and I was hooked. Listen to the interview here His basic premise is that when you go into the studio you have a producer that helps shape the recording, so when you play a show you should have a producer that helps shape the show. This hit me hard because of my theatre background. When you produce a play you need a director. When the actors do it themselves, frequently there are great actor moments but, the overview of …