Always Behind, Never Ahead

One problem that I always seem to have is feeling like I am behind, off-schedule, running late, or otherwise incapable of completing a task sufficiently by the deadline that has been set. In my case, the official record release concert for Fundamental is less than three weeks away and the official drop date is exactly three weeks away. Promoting the release show is just one aspect of promoting the record, and promoting the record doesn’t just end after the release date.

That said, part of my day today will be spent figuring out what promotion is essential to complete prior to the release show and what can wait. And even more than that, what promotion will be more effective if it is staggered over time, as a part of a larger strategy to build a larger fan base?
These are the questions that an independent artist has to ask – in addition to all of the other, more creative ones: does the chorus on this recording need another guitar part? do those lyrics fit the theme of the rest of the song? what chord am I missing in there?
The trick for the next three weeks will be balancing my desire to be creative and my necessity to do all of the business-y things like handing out flyers, hanging posters, writing press releases, contacting the local media, etc.

Mailing List Overhaul

So I just spent the last 30 minutes updating my music mailing list. Wow! That was depressing! Basically, I added back in all possible known email addresses for all individuals on the list to find out which ones bounce back as undeliverable. From the undeliverables, I’ll know which addresses to trash from the list. In the past, I’ve kind of ignored the “failure notices”, as Gmail calls them, when emails cannot reach a particular recipient (IE: an email address no longer exists).

It wasn’t an astronomical number of failure notices – somewhere around 20 or so – but it’s still enough to make you do a double-take. The question becomes: am I actually failing at this?