Chapter 22: Working with Tom Jackson Productions and Amy Wolter

Posted by admin on July 6th, 2010 | No Comments »

This week I am going to post a blog post by Amy Wolter, the live music producer from Tom Jackson productions that we flew in from Nashville to work with us on our show last week.  She wrote a post about the experience on her own blog and I liked it so I’m going to repost it

Here is the link to it: http://bit.ly/9xXEu6

On a personal note, the experience was a very worthwhile one.  One of the things that Amy helped us understand as band is how to step out of our “musician heads” and step into the head of being a member of the audience.  Most audience members don’t speak the same musical language that musicians speak, so they will actually HEAR something better when they can SEE it.  Amy helped show us how to SHOW the audience what we were playing which at first, made some of us uncomfortable or feel insecure.  However as the band leader I encouraged everybody to take risks and trust Amy’s expertise in the subject of Live Performance Production and as we continued to work, we started to get more comfortable with some of the movement we were doing.  Even simple things like walking to the front of the stage to take a solo or highlight a bass line made huge differences.

Our first show since our work with Amy is tomorrow night in Burlington VT.  We are excited to see how our connection with our audience benefits from this work and are eager to share it with you all.

Stay tuned…

Chapter 19: Rocking My Radical Plan and Being Nicer to Myself

Posted by admin on May 7th, 2010 | No Comments »

First off, I will say that I am ROCKING my radical plan.

A couple parts of my plan were to book myself at five more venues, get featured on 3 more interview or blog talk radio shows, and to write a brilliant business plan.  Well I will just tell you that I booked us another 10 shows, got featured on 3 radio shows and am in the middle of finishing a yes, brilliant business plan.  I am happy, rocking and in love with my life, music and business.

On another note, during rehearsal today Sally, Keesha and I were looking at the rough draft of a new promo video that we shot at our last gig.  Its the rough draft so a lot of it is apt to change even though it’s already solid, and I was being mean to myself…making comments about how I might look or sound like a tool when I was being interviewed etc.  Keesha said something of the sort like “wow Zach, you are really going to town on yourself,” a little taken aback by how harsh of a critic I was being.

Why was I being like this?  Because I think I’ve realized that it’s easier to and SAFER to think poorly or self-depricate rather than take the risk and own who I really am or what I am standing for.  I am standing for putting music out there that helps heal peoples hearts, that moves people emotionally in the way that it sounds and feels to them.  I am writing about accessible things: love, motivation, romance etc, but the arrangement, the tone and timbre of the music is uplifting, spiritual and healing.  I was talking about this in my interview and got insecure that I might sound arrogant or self obsessed and really I was just scared of being as vulnerable as I was being, of really telling it like it is.

What I learned is that it takes an amazing amount of courage to do what I do, but even more so to OWN it…to be unapologetic, not in an arrogant way, but in a confident way, about who I am and what I stand for.

I will post the video when it’s finished.

Love

Zach