Hello October!
One Big Huge Update
The latest in my world:
Before I forget - if you happen to live near Austin, there is a live concert performance approaching on November 3 at The 04 Center featuring myself and some of my songwriter friends: Erin Ivey, Grace Pettis, and Giulia Milanta. If you are local I hope you can come join us - I think this will be the last live IRL "Lex Land" event of the year, as far as I know...
You're probably reading this at least one day after I've typed it - I'm currently trying to get a little bit of work done in the in-between-other-things time pockets, which is all I've really had lately. Hence our "Hello October" post hitting your inbox on later this week from this writing.
While I'm very grateful and happy for the income live-gigs have been providing after a particularly rough summer, I'm unfortunately unable to do much else during these spells. For a few months before covid and for the last several weeks, I've had a standing gig on Thursday afternoons where I play at the Austin Airport. We do everything here with live music, so there are about 9 live music "venues" throughout our primary terminal. I was really lucky to get in on this pretty shortly after I moved here, so, with the exception of covid, of course, and a 1.5-ish-year period where they were reconstructing their parking configurations and I just could not hang with how much time that added to the whole endeavor, I've been playing at the Austin Airport at least once a month for about the last 12 years. The weekly residencies don't come around very often, so I am super grateful.
Because my husband and I share a car, gig days in general can be challenging. Fortunately, his day job is fairly close to the airport, and my airport gigs typically fall in a very convenient time window for carpooling. On Thursdays, we leave at about 9:30am so I can get him to work by 10. Typically I try to get a little work done in the car before heading to the airport at 11. 11:30am load-in, get through TSA and do a sound-check and merch/tip jar set-up before playing from 12:30-2:30. We're allowed a 20-minute break in the middle, but because this gig is really dependent on tips to make the time investment worth it, I usually just play straight through. I strike, load up and out and am usually at Ed's workplace again by about 3:30, and I try to do a little work in the car again until he's done at 5. Since today is Monday and I'm at a different venue, the times are a little different because the time-slot is different, but mostly the same routine. Every gig day has its quirks when it comes to scheduling, and that's often the tricky thing to work around and why I lose so much desk time.
So, here I am, trying desperately to catch up on this deliverable with the resources I have available to me. This will be another challenging week with coming back to the airport for my Thursday gig, and an atypical middle-of-the-week church gig thing that will keep me occupied from about 2pm-10pm including commute on Wednesday (not including the prep time required to shed the material, etc). So that unfortunately only leaves me Tuesday 10/12. Might be able to squeeze in a little time Friday, but that is usually time spent "wrapping up" the week by working on my filing/business budget, closing open loops, etc and reviewing what's coming up for the week ahead. Usually I do have some kind of work commitment over the weekend so sometimes there is prep or review required for that, but fortunately this weekend I will be able to spend some time on personal projects (or possibly trying to finish up the OBDR Public Release Project if it's still not wrapped up yet, but more on that in a moment). Especially if I'm doing Crooner Coffee Hour (which I'm not this week), then, as you can see, Friday is basically a lost day when it comes to getting any deep work done that is not recurring administrative-type tasks.
7 Songs in 7 Days Recap:
Thanks so much again for all your support during this crazy thing I do every year. It was wonderful to get to create a big new batch of songs based on your prompts, and I think we had a great time at the Concert. (There’s a deeper recap at the bottom of this post where you can check out all the songs if you missed them.)
Thank you for renewing your annual subscription or for keeping up your monthly membership. Because of your support I'm able to do a bunch of pretty wild things, like have the ability to write a song every day. So thank you.
At the end of the Concert (the replay for which is available here), I mentioned that I am SO behind on SO many things that I needed to step away from the live broadcasts for at least a couple weeks while I got caught up, and then brought up something else that's been on my heart for a while...
Changing up the Vault deliverable for 2023?
I’ve been writing pretty much nonstop for the better part of the last decade (starting with weekly writing as a participant in Bob Schneider's "Song Game" from maybe... 2012-2016? though I think there was maybe a year hiatus in the middle of that, before starting the monthly songs here at Patreon/The-Vault), and then also, just, a lot before that, and I need at least a temporary break from the pressure of *having* to write.
Unfortunately, as long as the promised Vault deliverable is a new monthly song, I will never get that break. Particularly since 30 Songs in 30 Days last year (who'd a thunk?), I've been struggling to find the drive and enthusiasm I'd had to write, and *surely* some of that has to do with there already being a pile of 100-200 songs that are just sitting in here (The Vault), mostly undeveloped and unreleased to anyone outside our circle.
So that’s why I started thinking about changing up what a deliverable could be that would provide value on both sides of this relationship transaction to suit the current season. The solo-acoustic and solo collections ("Alone"s) were always intended to be a temporary bridging of the gap until I could realize a more professional recording project ("album") into being, because albums cost... a lot... to make, and since I'm on my own (no label, I mean), I'd been hoping I could snowball the smaller albums into an eventual bigger one, so to speak.
But I'm an army of one- and I'm learning the painful lesson that there's only so much I can do on my own, and, more pointedly, I can only progress at a certain pace whilst on my own, and that pace is going to have to be slower than I would like. That's ok, it's a process, and of course, anything could happen and anything could change at a moment's notice. But this is the reality for now.
The new (but temporary) proposed deliverable:
So instead of the "wait til the moment's right" album of fantasy, I'd like to spend the next year focusing my creative energy on: (1) developing songs from the current catalogue of unreleased material that you've helped me to create (2) ask for your opinion on which songs to tackle, progressively (3) spend each month creating a public release of each, granting you early and complimentary access to it. So, for the remainder of 2022 and most of 2023, I would like to pivot the monthly deliverable to one "Public Release Project" per month. Instead of the brand-spanking-new-writing of a song, you'd receive a more polished/finished version of an older one.
I can generate some pretty decent-sounding, more-fully-produced recordings with the current technology and with our gear and community resources (my professional-drummer husband who will do it for free and who is trying to get a home-recording business going really makes that piece of it a no-brainer). Having new/current, nice-sounding recordings available for public consumption would give me some promo assets, market relevance, things to post about and rally our current community around, etc, and should/could get in front of a few new listeners, enabling our community to grow; and, lastly, would not only give me the much-needed break from the “having-to-write” grind, but also put some more perceived purpose into the writing in the first place, because what I’m writing is getting some more development and attention as it mostly hasn’t for a while (which, as I mentioned above, is contributing to the burnout/what’s-the-point thing I’ve been struggling with).
In my fantasy, I would like to rotate through the projects to give them somewhat-equal focus until something comes up that changes my mind about doing it that way. So for October, you'll get a One Big Dark Room Release, followed by a few holiday releases from Lex Land, with possibly a Moorhaunter release in January (for instance). Ideally, I would like for there to be a cover-song-release monthly rotated through the projects as well, but I'm hesitant to promise too much too soon.
This month’s Public Release Project experiment:
As a first foray into this venture, I'll be running a "test" for this month - instead of a brand-new original song written based on one of your prompts, I'll be releasing TWO fully-produced Autumnal singles for public release Halloween weekend from the One Big Dark Room project (namely, "Carried Away," last October's Vault song, and "A Welcome End," Song #25 from 30 Songs in 30 Days). I was very very close to doing these two songs like this last year for Halloween, but ran out of time, money, and energy, so the idea was rain-checked.
In the future, I would like to use a poll for you to help me select the next song(s) for the following month's "Public Release Project." I like the idea of giving you behind-the-scenes audio and stories, though I also don't want to ruin the experience of hearing it all together as the final product for the first time. Obviously, there are some details I still need to figure out about how all of this will work. So we're just gonna start here since we have to start somewhere.
If I have your blessing, I'd like to try this out (a new public release each month to the best of my ability, rotating through the projects, with additional cover-songs injected into the mix as soon as is feasible) until next September 2023, where we would pick back up with 7 Songs in 7 Days: 2023 and proceed into another year of monthly new original songs (or some combo of the two "iterations" of the monthly deliverable, which I would of course ask for your input and advisement about when we get there).
…but I would love the chance for you to hear what I come up with for the OBDR releases this month before you make up your mind, and then let me know what you think. :)
One Big Dark Room Virtual Single-Release Party (or: The October Vault Concert)
To celebrate this big undertaking, to celebrate Halloween, and to celebrate the first public OBDR release since May of 2020 (“Joshua”), I'm planning a special Keyholder full-band Single Release Livestream Concert for Saturday, October 29 at 9PM EST. We'll play an ensemble set of stripped-down One Big Dark Room songs for you live online for the first time (we've done it a few times out in the world pre-pandemic) before ending with the two songs I'll be releasing that weekend.
How the OBDR singles are coming along...
Since pretty much the day after the 7s7d:2022 concert we've been tracking for the OBDR halloween singles. I just got bass tracks back yesterday, and will be doing the final compositing and mixing later this week (my self-imposed set-for-digital-distribution deadline is Friday, 10/14 so that we can have the release public sometime between 10/28-10/31). I've already gotten the single artwork completed by Ian Branch, the same artist and designer who's been responsible for all the gorgeous work you've seen around here for the last several years.
Re: Livestream Schedule
As previously mentioned, after 7s7d I realized I had let a lot of my spinning plates fall and needed to do some tidying up, so I had to press the big PAUSE button on the livestreams, unfortunately. Things are going fairly well to that end, though, with some big unfinished projects in my personal life finally getting some attention, and it's allowed me to focus on the live stuff, the OBDR singles, and get started on the Sleepy Hollow audio book for your Halloween gift this year - which is going well, but slowly.
I'm hoping that by next week, I'll have a little more time to focus on setting up the broadcasts so that we can pick up Crooner Coffee Hour again on 10/21 and get a few spooky Fridays in before Halloween.
Of course, we'll convene for the One Big Dark Room single-release party on Saturday 10/29, but the "regular" One Big Dark Room livestream broadcasts will revert to monthly events instead of weekly for at least the rest of this year.
I would like to install a weekly, daytime, mid-week lexlandmusic Twitch channel standard broadcast - I'm hoping to start that on Wednesday, November 16, but when these events get added back into the recurring schedule will depend entirely on when I will have enough time to get them prepped. In my fantasy, we'd restart Disney Night the following week, 11/21.
More on Halloween
About a week ago I reposted the previously gifted Halloween spoken-word audio (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which I created and released for you in 2020, and a short collection of Edgar Allan Poe Poems from last year).
Just a reminder there is always a "Halloween/Autumn" songs playlist for you on the supplemental playlists page… scroll down a bit and you’ll see it, it’ll be followed by embedded Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe playlists.
Our next Vault-exclusive concert will take place on:
October 29, 2022
to celebrate the new releases for
One Big Dark Room
for a complete listing of scheduled events, check out the calendar.
SEPTEMBER RECAP:
While I still haven't caught up with some of the administration required from this big sprint (need to retrack and then re-upload some songs, upload the proper artwork and other reward deliverables in the right places, etc), I'd say this year's 7s7d was a success!
Here are the posts in case you missed it, or you can check out the 2022: new original songs playlist and listen to them all in a row here.
Day 1: A Way Out
Day 2: September Sunset Samba
Day 3: A Devil Unknown
Day 4: In Your Arms
Day 5: Laughing Last
Day 6: Somebody’s Somebody
Day 7: The End of the Night
... and then of course I played them all live for you for the first time for our Keyholder-exclusive debut event, the replay of which you can watch here (just scroll down to the archive list).
OCTOBER DISCOUNT CODE:
Your Vault exclusive discount code at the Lex Land Store for this month is: irsAPo
You can visit the store and automatically apply the discount code to your card by clicking here.
I know this was a REALLY long "Hello!" post and I appreciate you reading if you've made it this far. What we're doing here at The Vault is the central beating heart of my creative life and of my career and I hope I've been able to express how meaningful it is to have you here.
❤️L
rewards access:
