JUST WHAT HAS OCCURRED
1.28.24
Happy belated New Year, everybody. I hope you get my message in a bottle. Here's year 8 of my site, with almost zero evidence of anyone visiting it, and absolute zero evidence of anyone reading these news posts I do every month or so. But I'm a sentimental chap, and so, I hang on to this online diary.
The State of the QB Union is strong. I had my first interview, like, ever, with Jeffrey Lord's Funkytown Podcast. Jeffrey came up and introduced himself at the December show last year with Itchie Richey, although we did have some texting contact the year before when he featured "Anything for Christmas" on his Christmas episode. You can listen to the podcast we just did, here.
Forgive me, if, like an infrequently-visited relative, I give you news of myself that I've already told you. I believe I mentioned previously that I've been attending the weekly meetings of a singer songwriter org, The Songbirds of Fort Worth. We talk shop talk. We write new songs based on weekly prompt. I've written 8 songs so far, and you know what I'm thinking: to release an album featuring all of them. It's my favorite time of the week, those meetings. Really lights up a Monday with a little healthy competition plus a drive to impress other writers.
The big news today is tomorrow's release of the new EP: Sudden EP. Readers of this space have been hearing about this for almost a year—how sudden is THAT??–and, at last, it's out. Six songs of bass + a real, live drummer. DAW-recorded, for the first time since 2017's Western Man from Back East. This EP, however, I mixed and mastered all by myself, unlike that album. In any case, Sudden EP is a swell addition to the growing QB back catalogue, and has bought me time for the next album, which may be the above-mentioned Songbirds project, or another one that I've collected songs for and I'm currently arranging. Stay tuned, as they said back in the day when there were tuners.
No shows on the horizon yet, which I'm somewhat glad about. All the extra rehearsals that an impending show needs I have no time for now, as I've decided to up my amount and variety of social media posts. TikTok seems to be working, slightly, for me these days, as I chop up existing music vids into bitesize bits and post them. I've got about 100 followers now, growing by one or two per day. Give it another year at that rate and I'll be...still pitiful. There's a recent TT acquaintance of mine, who's my age, and her thing is...she's a regular person. She's got 12K followers. If I had half that, I imagine I'd feel like some kind of superstar. I think. Unless I found then that it's not appreciably different than having 100 followers. 250 views or so and a few likes. Every once in a while a comment. If that were the case, I'd really be in a quandary as to which way to turn, promotionally.
There's always good old YouTube, of course. New video from the Sudden EP, "All I Have Left" should be up by now. Stuck at a miserable 370 followers with average views of maybe 60, I'm nothing to text home about on YT. It's a funny thing. There's one video of mine, "Take a Naked Walk" which sits, a massive Gulliver among Lilliputians, with 150K views. (The popularity almost certainly due to the illicit video of a vintage nudist camp film.) That video's success is a testament to overall failure. If one can hit big, why can't the others? To continue and repeat that success, shouldn't I use that successful video as a guide in making future vids? One success is a fluke. Even ten successes is a fluke. Social media keeps us fetching the ball of attention like e-golden retrievers—sometimes we run when the ball isn't even thrown. And that's all...whatever. But it's keeping me from actually picking up a guitar and playing daily. I doubt seriously I can keep it going, minus some kind of ego feed/recognition reward to keep me running the maze. Social media is the mother-in-law of my beautiful wife, music. I'm in love with music, but I spend most of my time with her damned annoying mama.
Which reminds me, Instagram has this new X-competitor app, Threads. I'm on there, but all I do is post truisms about art and artists. I write one every day and so far I think only two have been read. I'd ask for your support there, dear reader, but you're not reading this, either. Sigh. I gotta get this posted on my own site, now. Here's to an interesting year!
3.13.24
Skipping over Valentine's Day to wish you a Happy Saint Patrick's Day, impending. Swinging my notes here from Hallmark™ holiday to Hallmark® holiday is about the most I've been able to mangage so far this year. Not that I've got anything particularly cooked up that's keeping me busy. Stewing, is more like it.
February saw me giving my social media efforts an exceleration, but, to my astonishment, it wore my right down in nothing flat. I set out for a good two or three weeks to post something on TikTok—and farm that content out to the "others"—3 times a day. I can't say I saw my numbers skyrocket as a result. Just the same 1 to 2 follows per day and the same 250 views per post. No movement on Spotify. Didn't take me long to say, "Dear Madame Barnum: I resign as clown." (Thanks, XTC!)
It got quickly to the point where I didn't want to pick up the bass and play. That's not something unique to me, it seems. I've seen quite a few posts on Threads reporting the same syndrome: social impotence. Social media is the easiest, ever-open art gallery. It's the coffee shop anybody can go to and perform in front of. But it's not horribly different, it seems, from the good old downtown telephone poles of yore, where bands would staple posters about upcoming shows. Our posters stayed up bright and attractive for about ten minutes until it rained. Or another band stapled their poster on top of ours. Or the authorities ripped them down. And if none of those things happened, those posters got weathered and sad looking. Social posts have about the same longevity and effectiveness as those old posters. And just like the poles, one has to post at the right time to catch, oh, anyone's attention.
What's a beggar to do, Question or otherwise? Me, I'll just post when I post. Drop singles and albums when I drop them. Play shows when I play them. I'm still not seeing a music scene anywhere, local or national, that's on fire or even catching fire yet. At such times, it's an artist's lot to hunker down and keep creating for a more attentive someday, should one emerge.
Towards that end, I've got some significant new avenues to explore for upcoming projects and shows. I've gathered ten songs or so for an upcoming album using the newly-refurbished Eko bass hybrid. It's got a very bluegrass/middle eastern sound to it. Then there's the songs I've written as part of the Songbirds of Fort Worth group. Got an album's worth there as well. I've also made a new pedal/sound discovery that I'm currently experimenting with. Also, I've discovered a new tuning to use that I'm intrigued by, but haven't written anything for as of yet.
Also, possible show coming up, end of May. Stay tuned.
5.2.24
Obviously, my attempt at giving a serious run after social media ate me alive. I haven't had the fuel to post an update here in like three months. And that dispiritment didn't just eat my promotional drive, it was killing my artistic one, too. I had lots of recording projects that I wanted to start—new songs to learn—but most days, I couldn't face picking up a bass to rehearse. My attendance at open mikes plummeted.
So I cut the posting down, after just a couple of weeks, to once per day on TikTok, Instagram, and threads. Every few days for Facebook. Every two weeks or so for YouTube. That helped, along with steady affirmations that feeding the socials has nothing to do with my art. It's a meaningless chore, like cutting the grass. And the less of that, the better. Finally, about a month ago, I had a breakthrough.
I was avoiding rehearsing and playing through uncompleted songs on my digital recorder and got inspired by the songs that were left off the last release, Sudden EP. Six tracks, and all but one—which I had to rewrite—great songs. I'd meant to make a kind of bluegrass album, originally, by adding a 3-stringed banjo, and some hand drumming, and then some rocking Les Paul three-stringed guitar, and—Hey presto!—I had a full, 3-piece arrangement kind of album put together.
And on May 12th, it drops: Three-Piece Suite. Six songs, 26 minutes. A bit long for an EP, a bit short for an album. Sue me. Let's just all download it and stream it and whatever it is we do to enjoy sweet, sweet music. This album is another "different sound" for Question Beggar, who seems to make every album sound a bit different, so, in that sense, it's business as usual.
Also, on the Sunday it releases, I'll be doing a podcast, (Twitch, really) with fellow Fort Worth musical artist, BK, to talk about the new album, and the universe around us. Like me, he's a visionary artist, a singer songwriter, and we will broach amazing subjects, I doubt me not. Listen to it here...
This will be my third interview in as many months, so I'm going to add a page onto this site for interviews. Along with BK's interview, there's an interview I did for JoCo Radio on the Banded show, with Destiny Rae on March 18th—late notice, I know—and my segment on the Funkytown Podcast, from January 18th.
To make room in the navigation at the top of the QB website for the interview page, I'll be taking down the laughable "EMAIL SIGNUP" link. I think it only ever got one click, and I'm not likely to administer it if it got hundreds of clicks. Well, I would, really. But I'll cross that bridge when the email signups reach, like, double digits. Surprise me. It would be a good problem to have, but, as ever, fame and fortune are gonna have to track me down where I hide in my studio shed and drag me into the limelight. I aint chasing nuthin!! Anyhow, I'll keep the page, but take it off the main navigation. I'll link to it from the ABOUT page. Here.
I have released a few music videos, since last we spoke. I finished off my video obligation for last Summer's album Rude Yard, releasing "Gods"–twice, since my first version got denied for copyright violation, that version shall remain unseen. The B-roll was from a Soviet cartoon. Who the hell can own that? I thought I was in the clear, there. I really did. Then, thinking I had released all six songs from the album, I thought I was done, but no. Turns out I can't count so good. I still owed myself a video for the song "Beggar." Imagine me missing THAT one. I dropped it to no account. A mere 22 views. Sad. At least "Gods" got a worthwhile 121 views. "Tommy" topped that with 136. All in all, not very popular, that flute album.
I'd say the vids for the Sudden EP have also been road apples, (49 views for "All I Have Left" and slightly better for "Rolling 94" with 55 views) but—wow!—the video for "No Friend" (which I had written off as the weak sister of the EP) gets a whopping 504 views after just 5 days! (Yes, I realize these are all humiliating numbers, comparatively, but leave me be in my Fantasyland, k?).
Two months prior, I also randomly released a live-in-studio cover of the Claxton Kent tune from 2013, "Try My Breed." I rewrote it—in response to a Songbirds of Fort Worth song prompt—and retitled it "My Breed." The video got a respectable (to me, anyhow) 79 views. Hey, baby steps. One day, the world will discover me and my Comstock Lode of content and rush across the Great Plains to devour all I've put out and you'll see these views skyrocket then. And YouTube will pay me hundreds of dollars, no doubt.
And that's about all for now. I've got plans for a live show of some kind coming up in a month or two. Also, I've decided to put a couple more albums out as the year goes on. I figure I should just max the releases. It's the artist thing to do and what I enjoy the most. There's the promised Songbirds album of songs written for that club, and also, believe it or not, a gospel album, also waiting in the wings. Stay tuned and see, what, if anything, I actually wind up doing! Ciao!
7.26.24
Glad tidings! As disclosed last time, I had a gospel album in the works, and today it drops. Meet Subhymnal. As always, go to the Question Beggar page on Bandcamp.com for the full liner notes, but, basically this is another concept album where I take seven random hymns from a 1948 hymnal—Church Service Hymns—and re-write them into rocking Heavy Skiffle tunes. While keeping the words the same.
It was a fascinating ordeal, fun, with many restarts and twists and turns, but it turned out amazingly good. A nailbiter. Up to the last mix, I couldn't tell if it was garbage or great. Well, it won me over, so I'll be interested to see what—if anything—the public will make of it.
So what have I been up to, besides recording, since the last posting here? Not playing out, that's for sure. Not even open mikes. Although I did finally play the Magnolia Motor Lounge Singer Songwriter night last Tuesday. (First time since late April!) I've been a bit cloistered this year and I've had work done on a couple of neglected instruments: the Jay Turser 3-string bass (the one that looks like the old Beatle bass) and most significantly, the Gibson Les Paul Studio guitar. On the Les, Mike the Luthier lowered the action, gave it a twelve-string bridge and added the extra outputs, including a tapper. It plays so sweet and jangly and easy, I set to reconfiguring my rig to make it THE guitar to play.
The challenge was, the Les doesn't have a bass string added to it. Just a guitar A string tuned down to a B. My thesis was that I could put the Boss octave pedal in my rig and the effect would be the same overall as if it were a bass string. Initially, it didn't work that well, due to the signal weakness of the Schaller pickup on the low string. But I dug into my trunk of misfit effects and found my MXR Bass d.i.+ pedal to boost the signal, and—viola!–it worked great. In the studio. But it needed testing LIVE. And that needed new songs, since I played it differently, somewhat.
I should also note that the additive effects, usually carried by my Electro-Hamonix mellotron and vintage organ pedals, respectively, needed some love. I un-assed the money for a Boss SY200 synth pedal to handle the job. The resultant cheezy, greasy, 80s atmospherics might be wonderfully fresh, if tastefully mixed in.
In no time, I had a new set of six songs (Hmm...enough for a new EP...) written just for the Les. As I rehearsed them for live play, I became tangled up in recording Subhymnal and only a couple of weeks ago returned to rehearsing the Les tunes. So on the 23rd of July, the historic first run took place.
It worked well enough. As often happens, however, the immediacy of performance took my eyes off the technical ball. I may not have had my MXR pedal activated, and perhaps the bass wasn't sufficiently boosted. Not that I could tell from the stage. Also, I didn't notice that the synth pedal was set to the wrong sound on the first song. It must have been something subsonic, though, because I couldn't hear any effect. I did set the synth properly on the second song and that sounded good. I didn't play the song well, but that was secondary. This initial run was promising. Magnolia's sound is always the best, so if that Les sound didn't work there, that would be concerning. I'll try it again in another couple weeks, with some specialized training in preflight checking the rig.
On social media, I've settled into a manageable routine, posting once a day, usually, on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads. A couple of vids on YouTube every month. Every once in a while on Facebook, and practically never on X. On TikTok, the views for each music vid are now averaging at 650 or so, but my follows are stuck at 180. What does it mean? Only Algo knows.
Threads is interesting. The QB account there is primarily focused on art content. That is, my view on art and artisticism. The following there is around 190 or so, so far, but getting any kind of response is not easy. What does it mean? Only Algo knows. A constant theme is emphasizing that promotion is not the duty of the Artist. And that art is useless, not done to a purpose. And that commerce and art are at cross-purposes. Is this self-serving, given my lack of any mercantile success? No, I tell you, no. And I dare the Fates to visit upon me wealth and fame to test my purity in this matter. Hey, that's not bad. I think I'll put that one up on Threads.
And speaking of YouTube, I've got a three-way circus going on there now, requiring videos from three different albums now: two left to do from Sudden EP, four left to do from 3-Piece Suite, and now six left to do from Subhymnal. It's a good problem to have. Always let your songs to be videoed pile up.
Toward that end, I've got theoretically two more albums to do this year. The album of six Les Paul songs, and the first volume of songs written in my association with the Songbirds of Fort Worth. Oh, and a Christmas single, probably. Then, beyond that, the Watauga album and another one called Cap'n KeepItReal, should the Lord be so kind as to keep me recording. Every day is a gift, truly, at my age. And my age is like 20 years younger than it seems!