Loving Every Other Minute of It is now available in all formats!!!

On Saturday, I shipped the first 25 vinyl copies of Loving Every Other Minute of it.

Both the vinyl and CD versions of the album now ship immediately from my website. You can also buy the album as a digital download through Bandcamp.

That means Loving Every Other Minute of it is now available in all formats. It’s been quite a journey to bring the music to you in all of these formats, and I’m very pleased with how it’s come out.

Also, we’ve recorded a series of “live” videos that — with the generous help of Chris Glass Hartley — we’re pulling together for you right now. The first video, “Incident,” is ready for you at YouTube. The new plan is to release one video per month for at least three months, with “Johnny Marr” next in line. Link to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss a beat.

Moreover, I published a short “About this Song” on “Incident” at Medium last week. I will eventually tell the story of each of the ten songs on Loving Every Other Minute of It, again shooting for one per month. Follow my Medium account to make sure you don’t miss one.

One of my heroes, David Lowery, had a great Facebook post recently about how to profit from album releases in the internet age. Anyone who’s heading into this brave new world of music promotion should read it because I think he has great advice. Still, I’d like to offer what I think is most important about writing, recording, and releasing your own material these days.

1) Take your time.

If I’m being honest, the first song for Loving Every Minute of It was written in 2008, and if I’m being really honest, some of the verses and choruses of the remaining songs were pilfered from songs I wrote and abandoned in the 1990s. Coming up with even a decent batch of songs in a matter of a few months or even a year probably isn’t going to get you where you want to go. Unless you’re David Lowery. Or Gene Burnett.

2) Get Investors.

In February of 2020, vinyl was not on my radar. At the Murphy’s Outlaw gig that month, my friend Larry Altman approached me and suggested I do vinyl. Little did I know that vinyl was in the middle of a resurgence, and many members of my family bought and listened to vinyl. As Lowery suggests, the cost of vinyl is prohibitive, but Larry suggested he might be interested in investing to make it happen. Soon after, Larry’s sister-in-law Joanne Bartsch joined in, we all figured out what it would take to make vinyl a reality, and this pair stuck with me and Bret through it all to bring the gold record home. See if someone in your circle is similarly inclined.

3) Keep your day job.

I respect anyone who’s trying to turn their art into a livelihood. I’ve tried a number of such avenues over the past few decades, with varying degrees of success. I know how hard it is. Take it from someone who’s played this game at more than one level: when you pursue your art as a career, your job is no longer to create art. Your job is to market your art. The beauty of not calling your art a job is that, the instant the marketing aspect of the gig gets to be too much — and it does for every artist I’ve ever met — you walk away and go back to your art. No need to beat it to death on the internet or to sell it to the highest bidder. That’s what your day job is for. Get back to making art. That was all you wanted to do in the first place.

That’s it for now. I’ll touch base again in January. Happy holidays, and do take good care.

Below is a condensed version of some of my most recent news.

To give you an early taste of the album, I’ve posted the album’s single, “Johnny Marr,” at my ReverbNation page.

Here’s another song from the album, “Incident,” which in this version I play solo acoustic. At my YouTube channel, I’ve posted two more tracks from the album played by me solo acoustic.

Both my first novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix and second novel Ghost Notes are again for sale at my website.

All of my books and music are no longer available at Amazon and Spotify. Buy them directly from me instead.

My latest novel Badge is available through my website as a physical book, and as an ebook at a number of outlets such as Apple Books and Barnes & Noble.

My first solo album Songs From Memory is available through my website as a physical CD, and at a number of outlets such as iTunes as a digital download.

Laying down the law,

Art

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