So we are approaching the 6 month mark of life in a pandemic. It’s pretty amazing to me how quickly we can adapt to most anything. What was life upending only a little while ago becomes normal fairly fast. At this point, I think even the apocalypse would be mundane within a month. So it goes.
I am now two months into doing this Hidden Hollow monthly mailing list. I’ve really enjoyed it! As someone who doesn’t care for social media very much and uses it pretty begrudgingly, a monthly update full of things I’ve made, and things I’d like to share, is way more my speed (and do we really need to hear from anyone we don’t personally know more than once a month?).
That being said, I know a lot of people haven’t been receiving them. Please know that I am aware, and I’m working on it. I am not the most internet savvy when it comes to anything without a built in GUI that does most of the work for me, so I have been learning a lot of the new mailing list landscape through trial and error. You see, a lot of privacy laws have changed in the past few years, and while that is a good thing that I wholeheartedly support, it means that mailing lists are nowhere near as simple as they used to be. It used to be 1) add email list 2) write email 3) send mail 4) swim through your money vault like Scrooge McDuck. Now there are a lot more requirements and restrictions and tests you have to run. So the vast majority of these are still going to spam, if they are delivered at all. But I got it more correct on issue two than the first one, so I’m hoping to keep improving.
For those who missed it, I have a new Radical Face single in every issue. These are not part of my new album. I want to clarify that. These are things I just make for fun, or one-offs, or experiments. And since I have really gotten back into painting (specifically learning how to paint digitally), I have been coming up with a painting for each single and using the time-lapse of it as the music video.
Here is the first single, titled “The Missing Road.” I put descriptions on all the YouTube videos now, as well as the lyrics, in case you are one of those weirdos who likes to know what things are about, or how they’re made.
And here is the video for what came out on Tuesday, in issue number two.
I will make sure to post these on here as I go, but if you would like to stay up-to-date, I recommend joining the mailing list (http://eepurl.com/hb4lwf), or following me on YouTube or Spotify. Those will be more immediate, and more reliable than social media.
I will be using social media less and less, I think. I never did much of it in the first place, but I decided at the beginning of the year that I would try posting more on things like Instagram. I haven’t liked it all that much. It doesn’t make much sense to me as a musician. They are visual platforms. Why would someone sign on to something that is about sharing images to find out about music? And now with all these metrics that these companies give you, my suspicions have been confirmed. People don’t. The click-through rate from these platforms is very low, almost non-existent. So I see it as due-diligence to put up reminders where people are, but it is increasingly showing itself to be pretty pointless unless you are enjoying tracking how many people click “like” on things. Personally? I will be much happier to just post work where it really lives, like streaming services, and not bother anyone beyond a monthly email that collects everything relevant into one letter. Fingers crossed I can get to where that is enough. I’d be happier, for sure.
But speaking of visuals, I have been drawing and painting so much in my free time these days that I have started posting it. It is not lost on me how much more these platforms make sense when what you do is visual. For example, I started an art Instagram just to dump whatever I’m painting onto. It doesn’t create anywhere near the dissonance, or the “what the hell am I supposed to do on this thing?” constant question that running a music account does. So if you like the visual art I do and want to see me spam around five images week, you can follow that. I will update the artwork section here on my website a couple times a month, too.
Beyond that, I just want to say that I am really happy with the progress and sound of my new record. Having all this time and space and to really get it exactly how I want it to sound and feel has been wonderful. I like to take my time with albums, and because life has generally been a hot mess for me these past 7 years, this change of pace is so welcome I couldn’t possibly overstate it. And I hear it in my results. I do my best work when I can really devote a lot of my mind to a project. And the singles give me a good excuse to just have fun and be more in the moment. It’s a good balance. Let’s see if I can keep it up.
I hope this finds you all healthy and well.