Hello January!
Concert: 1/25/22
Greetings, friends,
Here's my first real transmission of the new year, and I'd love to share some of my insights from my reset time and ideas and plans that pertain to our community/future-broadcasts, and where I'm at as a content creator and music artist at this point in my life…
This post has taken me almost all my waking hours this entire week to ideate, draft, revise, edit, etc… there have been many times where I almost published it, then would gaze down the barrel of what I was promising and realize it was all still too much. So here’s what I’ve pared it down to…
My ruminations below are exntensive, so if you're not up for reading all about my hows and whys of what's to come and what I'm switching up from last year, don't worry: I've got you covered.
Here are the most important points that might be of interest to you:
our first Vault Concert of '22 is scheduled for Jan 25, at 8PM EST
all other Vault Concert dates for '22 are scheduled, and posted in the calendar
your new discount code is active
our first livestream back will be the debut of the moorhaunter Twitch channel on 1/14/22 (in what is usually the Crooner Coffee Hour slot)
"Lex Land" livestreams are on hold until February, starting with Crooner Coffee Hour (FB Live) on 2/4
Disney Night returns 2/7, 8PM EST
our first One Big Dark Room livestream is scheduled for 2/1 at 8PM EST
evening livestreams will now start at 8PM EST (formerly 9PM EST)
each livestream will be a little shorter for the foreseeable future
Vault Pins from 30 Songs in 30 Days are currently on their way to me from the UK and will ship starting Jan 20
the community forum at Discord has been restructured, so check it out and "confirm" yourself as a member so you can get up to speed and customize your settings
If you're curious to know more, or have a little time on your hands, feel free to read all my innermost thoughts and feelings explaining more about these points below.
Thanks so much for your support and patience and I'm looking forward to catching you around the internet really soon...
The Long of It (my 2022 "state of the union" 🤣):
This Winter break, was, unfortunately, not as "restful" as I had envisioned, but it has been productive in many good ways and I am looking forward to spending regular time with you again!
As is typical for many, I assume, at the turn of each year, and particularly for me at this one as I attempt to recover from severe self-imposed burnout (and as I venture into a new chapter of life as a married person with a big geographical relocation somewhere on the distant horizon), I've done some re-evaluating about what I want to change, drop, keep up, and improve upon for the months ahead...
Certainly a big factor in said recent burnout cycle is my not being able to say "no." Do you have a hard time with this, too? In recent years, I feel I've become pretty comfortable with fielding the requests of others on my time and energy resources, yet have yielded without resistance to just about every project and task idea that I could think to impose on myself, and often, if not always, under the duress of a coming-too-quick, self-inflicted deadline.
For reasons that I'd be happy to divulge in more detail during a livestream but which would be tedious for you to read here, in the spirit of saying "yes" to less, I've decided to focus my energy, time, and attention almost solely on our two primary pillars of content and community (and their respective improvement/growth/expansion) in 2022: (1) what we do here at The Vault, and (2) our livestream broadcasts over at Twitch. (At this point, I also intend to keep up Crooner Coffee Hour - our Friday morning Facebook Live gathering - at least until its 5th Anniversary in February of 2023, and will reassess its more far-flung future closer to that time.)
After a pandemic hanging over us the last few years, and with what seemed to be some near-reprieve from the resulting isolation, I had high hopes that 2022 might include some in-person house concert touring, and more live in-person performances in general. While that still might be possible to some degree, I am setting aside that idea again for further assessment at a later time when prospects of social gatherings are maybe more safe and certain.
If any additional resources present themselves or can be reserved (and probably only if), then I would like to spend those on putting together some professional recordings that feature other human beings to make available for public digital release.
Digital-Only releases like what I have in mind (like singles for streaming services) are a scarily big financial investment as they are expensive to create and almost never result in any ROI to speak of. (With wild variability artist-to-artist and song-by-song, of course, in my case, I'm estimating a cost of, at a minimum, $1000 per song, in exchange for, most likely, single-digits of dollars per song per year in royalty revenue coming back in from each.) However, it's crucial for me as a music artist to have professional assets (and "product") for a variety of reasons besides just the benefit of having them available for streaming.
You can probably guess that, while a full-album might fare *slightly* better on return from being able to sell physical copies, the capital needed to create an album of *twelve* (or so) single recordings at once is a much more significant amount, which I definitely don't foresee coming across in the next twelve months - although anything could happen at any point and I'm open to considering possibilities as they present themselves.
In the historical sense of the music industry, a record label would typically loan an artist the capital for projects such as these, which the latter would recoup through consequent sales. In my world, your support here is the closest thing I have to that, and anything I can provide for you (with entertainment, fun, or community) is a thank-you for your integral participation in my ability to create or share any music at all.
Since I'm a single-ADHD-person-operation trying very hard to do the jobs of easily 3+ people in an attempt to keep this thing afloat, it's really *really* challenging to stay honed in on what is, on the small side of things, the most efficient use of my time, and on the grander scale, the most meaningful.
This year, I want to try to figure out how to sustain my music-business while still providing you tons of value, and without burning myself out. I don't know if it's possible, but I have to believe it is, and I have to try.
Thus begins my quest of doing fewer, more enjoyable things with more focused intentionality. We'll see how it goes.
"They" say that 20% of what you do brings in 80% of the results. "They" also suggest that we are most effective when our proficiency in a skill aligns with our enjoyment of its execution. In adherence to these sage pieces of advice, the online live music performances are where x meets y for me, and why I'm choosing to assert my focus there.
In 2021, I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the ability to "stretch out" with the One Big Dark Room live streams on Twitch. To take on worldbuilding from a different reference point than my titular project was a positive thing for me both emotionally and creatively. Facilitating a connection between you and those songs which I've mostly kept private for years has been a balm.
While the One Big Dark Room Twitch Channel will continue to live on in 2022, I've long wanted to shine a similar light on the final face of the-self-indulgent-musical-expression triptych, moorhaunter. I'm excited to nurture this third project, which, in terms of branding, atmosphere, audience, and genre, I believe fills the gap between the other two. Further, I need a freer outlet through which I can experiment and grow musically. I'm not a great audio engineer, producer, or pianist, but to get good at something, one needs to practice. Since I won't, and can't, commit to any big undertaking arbitrarily and without some consequence and structure, I plan to start investing time and energy into this musical project to advance myself in these skills and give myself some room for "play" by launching the respective moorhaunter Twitch channel this month.
In order to get moorhaunter to affiliate status on Twitch swiftly, there will be many moorhaunter streams in January (in the timeslots where “Lex Land” streams have historically taken place) and I hope you will join me to help make it a successful start if you can. I anticipate these will be laidback and somewhat more ambient in nature than lexlandmusic or onebigdarkroom, but, of course, you, the audience and community, will entirely dictate what it ultimately becomes. In the beginning, they will also likely be short, just a little more than an hour. I'm planning to kinda-quietly launch the moorhaunter channel with its first broadcast next week, Friday January 14 at 11:30AM EST 😬
While I had originally intended to relaunch Lex Land streams at the same time, I begrudgingly came to the harsh realization that that would be a fast road to misery. So while we’ll be meeting just as frequently as before (if you care to join me in my newest endeavor), we’ll be meeting in “moorhaunter” world instead until February, at which time I’ll resume the regular “Lex Land” schedule. The calendar is currently up to date.
Updates to our recurring online broadcasts:
January will be heavy in moorhaunter broadcasts but light everywhere else because I need to hit hours-streamed and unique-broadcast-count goals within a 30-day window to reach affiliate status on Twitch. Trying to manage our old schedule and the hustle of launching a new channel seemed an ill-conceived idea.
After getting moorhaunter affiliated, I'd like to maintain the "Lex Land 3x/week" schedule (Monday night/Thursday afternoon/Friday morning), with alternating moorhaunter, onebigdarkroom, and Vault-Concert broadcasts on Tuesday nights.
The “Lex Land” property will resume again in February, with the first Crooner Coffee Hour on 2/4, adding in only Monday Disney Nights on Twitch for now (2/7), with Thursday Lunchtime to resume… sometime. One Big Dark Room will also resume in February, with first broadcast on February 1st.
Except on rare occurrences where there are schedule conflicts I can't avoid, the monthly Vault Concerts will take place on the second-to-last Tuesday of each month. Our Vault Concert for January will take place on January 25.
All of the 2022 Vault Concerts have been scheduled, and are listed on your Vault homepage and on the events calendar. I will try my hardest not to change the dates from what they are currently, but will update them in those places as the need arises if I can't avoid a reschedule.
"Until further notice" (or until circumstances change and this loose rule needs to be reevaluated), all the streams are also going to be shorter, with Vault-Concerts and Crooner Coffee Hour slimming down to a 60-minute goal, and all other broadcasts to 90-minutes when possible. Since we'll be meeting more often in more places, this seemed like a good way to increase some margin for me.
For the sake of my health, I can't stay on streams after 10pm my time anymore… it destroys my sleep schedule and the next day at least is always a loss (I have shutdown work to do after each stream, and then it takes me a long time to feed/hydrate/settle myself before I can fall asleep). So in addition to the broadcasts being shorter, the default evening start-time for our night-time streams will now be 8PM EST instead of the historical 9PM EST. Also, evening streams will now be on Tuesdays exclusively instead of also on Wednesdays... so that I don't have a husband coming in and out of the house during the stream on the weekday he almost always has a rehearsal.
Once we restart Legato Lunchtime (or whatever we decide to place during that block and whatever it's called, Thursday afternoons on Twitch), those will officially start at 1:30PM EST. We all know I was kidding myself with that 12:30PM start time. If we continue that format, I will do my best to limit the just chatting segment to one half-hour, with music starting at 2PM EST for approximately 60 minutes.
I'm very visual, and if I had been in your position reading this, I would have checked out by now. This all sounds like a lot/pretty crazy. For my visual-learner brethren, here's what a typical week of streams will look like throughout most of 2022 after we get moorhaunter affiliated:
“Lex Land” streams 3x a week, with Tuesday evenings alternating between Vault Concerts, Moorhaunter, and One Big Dark Room broadcast events.
Vault Deliverables:
You may have noticed that I haven't released any cover videos for the last couple of months... with the album launch, 30s30d, and everything else I piled onto my plate before my meltdown in November, that nagging *something* that I always stressed and always struggled to complete just fell by the wayside and I'm sorry for that.
In my years-held ideal-vision of The Vault, part of your contributions each month would be siphoned to hiring a videographer/editor for a proper cover song video or other video that would be created for you each month. Because we just haven't reached the point yet where the funding can fully support that, I’ve been taking it upon myself to DIY videos to fulfill that in the meantime. While I'm hoping I can become more effective at that this quarter, I will be relieving myself of that stress for at least Q1 2022, or until I can find an efficient and affordable way to do that that doesn't make me pull my hair out every time. Indeed, I'd much rather focus my energy on migrating and organizing all the old Patreon content over here to The Vault, the effort and time required for which I (unsurprisingly) underestimated.
The monthly new original song releases are really the crown jewel of this membership, and we'll be restarting that this month, on schedule.
Our Forum
Our Community Forum (Discord Server) has finally gotten remodeled! It's prettier, more organized, and better equipped to handle our needs and uses for it.
If you haven't checked it out lately (or ever), I hope you will now. It will funnel you into a "welcome" area with directions for what to do next. From there you can accept terms, get a quick tour and tips on how to engage with us on the forum, as well as view instructions for how to set up forum message notifications, go-live or announcement notifications (by musical project/twitch channel), or just turn all notifications from our server off.
This month’s VAULT concert will take place on:
January 25
You can watch the embed or find the link to enter via the monthly concert/events tab at the top of this page or from your Vault homepage. (You can also watch find the replay links from past concerts there.)
VAULT CONCERTS start at 8PM EST.
Here’s a world clock converter to help you calculate your time zone.
JANUARY DISCOUNT CODE:
Your Vault exclusive discount code at the Lex Land Store for this month is: NsA2y4
You can visit the store and automatically apply the discount code to your card by clicking here.
Thank you so much for your support here at The Vault this month and for your direct assistance in the creation of my art. It is appreciated more than I could ever express, but I hope the fun things we’ll do and create together this month will help convey my gratitude.
❤️ Lex
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