New Tribute CD arrived on Aug. 20 leaving 4 days for me to stuff 300 envelopes I had prepared earlier before we left for our tour/family vaca.
300 is a breeze, it is sizably scaled down due to the genre of the music. If it’s an Americana release it’s more like 500+. 1 sheet & cover letter, folded mind you, mailing and return address labels, stamps (4-5 each envelope) and CD…it’s exhausting.
These are all promotional copies going worldwide to radio, mags, etc.,
The post office is always the worst part of the promo push. Nothing like handing them an envelope and saying I need 300 of that amount…I’ll say nothing of international shipping. I always get overcharged…
But it got done and my wife, daughter and myself were off to spend two weeks on the road traveling through MI, IN & WI.
My wife said she’d never travel with me again when I’m releasing a CD cause I was on my iphone the entire time. Those 300 people have to be contacted to make sure they got the packages…
We were off to join a traveling food shelf tour called, “the Uprising” put on by the Tribe of Judah from Iron River, MI. It wasn’t billed as a traveling food shelf tour but that’s what it was. We played outdoor parks/bandshells, a few churchs, etc.,
They have a big bus and they did all the work. They set up the stages and cooked all the food and alls I had to do was show up at certain times and play a few sets. They just wanted to bless people with free food and music.
It is interesting to get lined up with other people’s visions and passions. Playing music puts you in contact with people whose vision is to house said music. Might be a traditional venue, might be an old mechanic shop, and might be a traveling food shelf.
We had a great time. We stayed at a small ranch for a few days, which my daughter loved…horses, dog, pancakes, but mostly we stayed in hotels. We’d swim in the morning and the eve and we got settled into a nice rhythm. It’s hard to do a new town every day and a new room every night and with a 8mnth pregnant wife and a 2 ½ yr old daughter it was a bit of a gamble. They did amazingly well and it’s my hope to be able to have that be a more frequent thing.
I will say it was a wash financially…mostly because of the hotels.
We spent the last 3 days in Wisc Dells, which was super fun. We stayed at an indoor water park/resort and it was really, really fun.
We ended with a show at Molly’s Rude Awakening and she said it was the best turnout in a long while so with that we headed for home. Arrived at 1am. It was good to be back in our beds.
