Brad Colerick : Juarez
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 12:11
One part of Falcon Ridge that I really like is the Emerging Artist Showcase. It takes place Friday afternoon from 12 until around 4. Over twenty different artists perform, selected out of a group of nearly 500. I always come away with having listened to new performers and new songs that I really like.
This year, I listened to all of them on MySpace before heading up. One musician I really liked was Brad Colerick . From his MySpace Page I listened to his song Juarez. I really liked it, so when he started performing it, I quickly turned on my camera and captured most of it in a video.
I contacted him and he has given me his permission to post this video.
Sean Tevis for State Rep
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/29/2008 - 10:34Running for State Representative is hard work. You need to find some way to get your message out in a race that many people pay no attention to. How do you do it? Perhaps you can get a major politician to come and help, the way Gov. Dean did for Kim in 2004. Perhaps you can raise a lot of money from wealthy individuals and be able to blanket the district with information about you. If you are lucky, you live in a state that has public financing of state legislative elections, and you can raise a fair amount of money and then spend time talking to the voters. Or, you can do what Sean Tevis did.
Sean Tevis is running for State Representative in District 15 in Kansas. He created a web comic, Running for Office: It's Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner.
In the comic strip, he is told that needs to raise $26,000 by August 5th. That’s only 52 people donating $500 each. However, he doesn’t know that many people that can donate that much money, so he sets his goals on 3,000 people donating $8.34 each. He notes that no candidate for State Representative in Kansas has ever had more than 644 donors. His advisor suggests that raising money from 3,000 donors would be impossible and would become the subject of newspaper stories.
His advisor is half right. As a result of the comic strip, he rapidly breaks 3,000 donors, and it does become the subject of newspaper stories. Even the Wall Street Journal has picked up on the story.
You need to find some good way to get your message out, and Sean has gotten the message out about his campaign, and even managed to weave in some wry comments about the issues. It is a campaign to watch.
Unpacking from Falcon Ridge
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 16:21It can be a lot of work to unpack from camping for five days at a folk music festival in the rain. It can be even more work if you are a social media consultant who has photographed, videotaped, recorded and microblogged a fair amount of the festival.
Today, I’m spending my time unloading the car and setting things out to dry and catching up on what is going on online. While I was at Falcon Ridge I sent seventeen videos from my cellphone up to various video sites. I need to spend time titling, describing, tagging, and in come cases geotagging what I’ve uploaded. I’ve spent a little time doing this with some of my videos on blip.tv.
The videos from my cellphone are low quality. Poor resolution and limited to 17 seconds. However, the montage provides a great glimpse into the experience. One of the emerging artists that performed Friday had a great song about having a brother go off to war. I think it was Amy Speace, but I’m not sure. The clip I captured has these lyrics:
There was Homecoming and football games
And picking out our dresses for the prom
With my brother in some desert dodging bullets
When he wasn’t dodging bombs.
I haven’t been able to find a copy of the song. If anyone knows where I can find it, let me know.
I also got a chance to upload pictures from my camera and put them in a Falcon Ridge Photoset on Flickr.
I have a couple great videos, one is of Lowen and Navarro and their friends and family performing Learning to Fall, and another is of Dar Williams with friends and family performing Iowa. These are special videos that I don’t want to post without speaking with the artists to make sure it is okay with them and done in a way that will be most beneficial to them and what matters to them.
Meanwhile, I’m going to tag a bunch of posts here on Orient Lodge into the Music category and take them off of the front page so people interested in other topics that I like to write about can find those posts easily as well.
There are other sites that I need update titles, tags and descriptions, and for that matter, I should really put a load of muddy clothes in the washing machine.
#frff Online Publicity Toolkit for Art
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 07/25/2008 - 07:55
Yesterday I ended up on the Online Publicity Toolkit for Artists panel with two of ny favorite musicians, Maura Kennedy and Dan Navarro. More later. This sunny morning I woke up early, did some chores, and joined the running of the tarps.
Preparing for Falcon Ridge
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/23/2008 - 12:00Last night, I spent a bit of time reviewing the different performers scheduled to be in the Emerging Artists Showcase at Falcon Ridge this year. Each one of them has a MySpace Music page up where you can listen to their music and find out other information about them. With that, let me list the artists, with links to their MySpace pages, and a few different comments about each one.
